2022–2024 CCDF Plan Preprint Training Guide Section 7: Support Continuous Quality Improvement

Lead Agencies are required to use a portion of their Child Care and Development Fund program expenditures for activities designed to improve the quality of child care services and to increase parental options for and access to high-quality child care (98.53). The quality activities should be aligned with a statewide or territory-wide assessment of the state’s or territory’s need to carry out such services and care.  Section 7 covers the quality activities needs assessment, which of the 10 quality improvement activities a Lead Agency is investing in, and indicators of progress for each of the activities undertaken in the state or territory.

These activities can benefit infants and toddlers through school-age populations, and all categories of care. It is important that while Lead Agencies have the flexibility to define “high quality” and develop strategies and standards to support their definition, Lead Agencies should consider how that definition and those strategies for different provider types reflect and acknowledge their unique differences and how quality varies in different settings, including family child care and small care settings as well as child care centers.