Full-Day, Full-Year Early Care & Education [California Preschool Planning Toolkit, Section 5d]

Full-Day, Full-Year Early Care and Education Partnerships: Recommendations of the Collaborative Partners Work Group

The demand for full-day, full-year early care and education services has exploded in California, as it has across the rest of the nation, because of welfare reform and other cultural changes. More than 60 percent of two-parent families with young children now have both parents working full-time. And many more single parents with very young children now work as a result of welfare reform.

In response to the changing needs of families, state and federal early care and education administrators have been encouraging providers nationwide to form partnerships to develop full-day, full-year service options. However, regulatory differences in child and family eligibility, class size and staff-to-child ratios, funding for staff education, and other state and federal requirements have hampered the success of such partnerships.

In California a group of Head Start and state-funded early care and education program administrators, federal program staff, and state program staff were brought together by the California Department of Education’s Child Development Division, assisted by the California Head Start–State Collaboration Office, to form the Collaborative Partners Work Group (CPWG) to develop guidance for local program providers contemplating entering into full-day, full-year partnerships.

This document is part of the California Preschool Planning Toolkit.