Child Care Research Partnership Reports

To better inform child care policymaking, in 1995 the Child Care Bureau of the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services began funding Child Care Research Partnerships. These partnerships use existing data collected for administrative and other purposes to increase understanding of child care markets for low-income families and the impact of child care policies on them. The partnerships are composed of university-based researchers and state- and city-level agencies responsible for child care services, including subsidies and resource and referral.

These reports are products of the Child Care Research Partnership led by the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) at the Joseph L. Mailman School of Public Health of Columbia University. The partnership includes state and city agencies in Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York City, as well as other research organizations. NCCP’s child care research partners are:

• Illinois Department of Human Services
• Illinois Network of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies
• Maryland Department of Human Resources Child Care Administration
• Maryland Committee for Children
• New Jersey Department of Human Services
• New Jersey Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies
• The State University of New Jersey, Rutgers
• New York City Human Resources Administration
• New York City Administration for Children’s Services
• Child Care, Inc., of New York City
• Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation

In one component of their work, the partners use existing administrative data to examine trends over time in child care supply and child care subsidy use. The majority of the data being analyzed at NCCP come from two sources: (1) member child care research and referral (CCR&R) agencies/networks describing regulated child care programs; and (2) member state subsidy systems describing subsidized families’ basic characteristics and child care arrangements.