National Center on Afterschool and Summer Enrichment Resource Library

The White House held a conference in September 2022 to develop a goal to end hunger in America and increase healthy eating and physical activity by 2030 to reduce diet-related diseases. This report is a playbook to meet this strategy and to reduce food insecurity from 10% to less than 1% of households. Strategies include improving food access and affordability, integrating nutrition and health, increasing access to healthy food choices; improving physical activity, and enhancing nutrition and food security research. This resource supports equity.

The State of California has allocated an unprecedented sum of $4.6 billion in one-time relief and $3.4 billion in permanent funding to expand afterschool and summer learning opportunities. This report provides an historical perspective on how their advocacy efforts planted seeds for more sustainable state investment by building relationships and partnerships with community-based providers, state and federal agencies, and legislators and through strategic communication. The lessons from CA are relevant for other city and state intermediaries who would like to increase city and state investment in afterschool and summer.  There is a companion webinar that can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYhNnEijWxk

This report analyzes data from a survey of approximately 1,500 parent and guardians conducted by Afterschool Alliance in spring 2022. It explores parent perceptions of OST program access, availability, and quality, along with the characteristics of the unmet demand in the context of the new federal Engage Every Student Initiative. The findings continue to show disparities for Black and Latino parents as they report facing greater barriers for enrollment on things like cost, location, hours, and availability. This resource supports equity.

This toolkit from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network offers tools, tips, and resources to help refugees. The toolkit includes information on refugees and refugee trauma, a description of core stressors, and recommendations related to screening, assessment, and intervention. This resource supports resiliency.

With programs hiring many new staff, this resource from Temescal Associates provides “Basics” professional development resources developed by Temescal and The How Kids Learn Foundation with links for free, easy access. Also included are worksheets, discussion guides, and other resources to support programs in leading their own professional development and reflection activities on topics like youth development, social-emotional learning, relationships, self-care, grief and loss, preparing youth for the workforce, and other curriculum guides.

This report from the Rand Corporation provides lessons learned from the Wallace Foundation's Partnership for Social and Emotional Learning Initiative (PSELI). Since 2017, six cities each have 5-7 partnerships each to explore how children benefit if schools and out-of-school collaborate to improve climate and foster social-emotional learning. This report provides the themes that have emerged from six case studies in Boston, Dallas, Denver, Palm Beach, Tacoma, and Tulsa.  

This report from the Urban Institute explores the use of CCDF child care subsidy payment rates and practices to try to expand the supply of specific types of child care that are in shorter supply (e.g., infants and toddlers, children with special needs, those needing non-traditional hour care, in communities of color). The report is the result of a literature review, expert interviews, shared preliminary findings with child care providers and provider organizations, and small group interviews with child care leads. The report finds that while CCDF funds and raising payment rates are necessary, this will not be sufficient, given that only a fraction of eligible children receive subsidies.    

On September 14, 2022, the National Center on Afterschool and Summer Enrichment hosted the “Addressing School-Age Needs in Licensing Regulations” webinar to introduce a new NCASE resource, hear state examples, share strategies and discuss promising practices related to licensing for school-age childcare programs.

This Workforce Wednesday webinar on September 14, 2022 by the National Center on Early Childhood Quality Assurance explores strategies to increase compensation and benefits for the early childhood workforce to insure that we are able to attract, prepare, and support our workforce. The webinar includes a panel with state examples from KY, MT, and VT, as well as remarks from Katie Hamm, Deputy Assistant Secretary from ACF and Dr. Ruth Friedman, Director of the Office of Child Care. 

This issue brief from the Government Alliance on Race and Equity focuses on unifying strategies and structures that facilitate a deep, widespread, and sustained commitment to racial equity across the whole of government. It outlines four basic strategies and each one includes actions that specific agencies can take: (1) Use an inside/outside strategy by building partnerships between government and the communities experiencing systemic racism; (2) Build capacity for lasting organizational change by providing training from experts and build Racial Equity Core Teams; (3) Build networked structures across the whole of federal government for long-term change through a centralized office and lifting up high-achieving agency practices; and (4) Prepare for and learn from internal and external backlash. This resource supports equity.