Blending and Braiding Funds To Support Early Care and Education Initiatives [CPPT, Section 5c]

In recent years, both the public and private sectors have made significant new investments in early care and education. These investments are largely a response to growing awareness of the importance of early experiences to brain development and school success, and to new demands for and attention to the need for child care for working families. Unfortunately, however, differing priorities and a lack of sufficient resources mean that these investments have primarily created or expanded categorical programs that narrowly define eligibility and services and operate separately from each other. Rather than representing a coherent early care and education system, they are a patchwork of disjointed programs with different emphases, requirements, and funding mechanisms.

A number of trends, however, are pushing states and communities to bring together traditionally separate services and programs and to create more integrated and responsive initiatives for young children and their families. Welfare reform has highlighted the need for quality, full-day, full-year early childhood programs. In an effort to provide full-time care to children in Head Start (which has traditionally been part-day, part-year), states and communities are fostering new partnerships between child care and Head Start programs. At the same time, the growth in state investment in prekindergarten programs is leading to new collaborations among schools and the Head Start and child care providers surrounding them. In addition, state and local governments and private funders have invested in community-driven initiatives that bring together stakeholders to assess needs and develop more comprehensive and coordinated services that are responsive to the needs of families. These efforts provide models and structures for interagency collaboration and public-private partnerships, as well as a foundation for integrating separate systems.

This document is part of the California Preschool Planning Toolkit.