Enhancing quality and expanding availability of early care and education services in the District is key to DC CCC’s mission. DC CCC collaborates with the Office of the State Superintendent of Education and other partners to provide a wide-range of business supports to child development centers’ and homes’ staff and administrators in the District.
By connecting early childhood professionals to an array of professional development opportunities; highlighting best practices in the field; and sharing funding opportunities, DC CCC’s commitment to support the District’s early childhood workforce is clear. A comprehensive overview of business supports available to child development facilities and homes is available here.
OSSE Contract Opportunities
Preschool Development Grant B-5 Needs Assessment
In September 2024, OSSE received a three-year, federal Preschool Development Grant, Birth to Five (PDG B-5) implementation grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. PDG B-5 supports states and territories in their efforts to enhance early childhood systems and improve children’s access to high-quality early care and education. OSSE’s PDG B-5 implementation grant focuses on four priority areas:
- Advancing inclusion, mental health and social-emotional development of children in high-quality early learning programs across the B-5 mixed delivery system, particularly children with disabilities or developmental delays and those who face other barriers to accessing and fully parcipang in quality early learning programs;
- Advancing education, compensation and well-being of early childhood educators;
- Assessing and enhancing the District’s approach to measuring, reporting and supporting continuous improvement in the quality of early care and education programs; and
- Enhancing OSSE capacity to support early care and education programs, early educators and families through communications, technical assistance and data analysis.
OSSE/DEL and H&A are seeking a contractor to synthesize, update and build on exisying needs assessments of the District’s early learning landscape in order to inform the District’s PDG B-5 grant activitiies, BSQECE implementation, and broader early childhood system building efforts. A wealth of research, studies and reports on the current state and needs of the District’s children, families, early educators and early childhood programs already exists, and OSSE has used these results to inform the PDG B-5 grant goals and activities, as well as other early learning programs and policies.
Review the Scope of Work for more information.
Capital Quality, the District’s Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS)
All child care programs operating in the District of Columbia must comply with established child care requirements, including licensure by OSSE DEL, unless specifically exempted. OSSE/DEL also administers the District’s child care subsidy program, which assists low income families in paying for child care, and oversees Capital Quality, the District’s Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS). Funded through OSSE, the Building and Sustaining Quality Early Care and Education (BSQECE) grant was awarded to two grantees, one of which is Hurley and Associates (H&A) to provide ongoing, comprehensive support and implementation of a robust set of program areas that will directly and indirectly support families. The program areas H&A supports are: (1) Capital Quality the District’s quality rating and improvement system (QRIS); (2) the DC Shared Services Business Alliance (DC SSBA); and (3) professional development for the early childhood workforce.
To further advance DEL’s effort to advance the work in the early care and education community in the District, OSSE/DEL, through H&A, will be utilizing a consultant to examine Capital Quality and make recommendations for the program moving forward.
Review the Scope of Work for more information.
Grant Opportunities
OSSE has partnered with the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF) to administer three multi-year grant programs supporting the District’s child care sector during the coronavirus (COVID-19) recovery: the Access to Quality Child Care Grant, Back-to-Work Child Care Grant and DC Child Care Stabilization Targeted Grant. Facilities may only participate in one of these grant programs. To determine if a facility is eligible and which grant program is most appropriate for the facility to participate in, the facility must complete and submit the general intake form hosted by LIIF.
- Access to Quality Child Care Grant: The Access to Quality Child Care Grant is a $10 million program that provides support to current and future child development facility operators to expand, open and improve new and existing child development facilities. LIIF will administer sub-grants to eligible child development facilities. Several sub-grant types are:
- Back-to-Work Child Care Grant: The Back-to-Work Child Care grant will provide additional financial assistance to preserve the supply of child development facilities in neighborhoods most impacted by COVID-19 through the District’s pandemic recovery. It will provide funding to facilities in COVID-impacted neighborhoods that have sustained financial losses during the pandemic to allow them to remain in operation, return to full capacity/enrollment, make open spaces available for families returning to work and limit tuition increases for families. LIIF will also provide business support and technical assistance to participating child care providers to help them increase enrollment, develop business and sustainability plans to ensure their facility’s ability to continue serving families following the end of the grant period, and make changes to their program or operations needed to improve financial sustainability or program quality.
- DC Child Care Stabilization Targeted Grant: In 2023 OSSE launched the DC Child Care Stabilization Grant to provide financial relief to child development facilities for unexpected business costs associated with the pandemic and help stabilize their operations and preserve the supply of child care for children and families. OSSE partnered with LIIF, the Washington Area Community Investment Fund (Wacif), Hurley & Associates and the United Planning Organization (UPO) to disburse funds to eligible child development facilities and began disbursing funds in early 2022. In FY23, LIIF will support OSSE to disburse additional DC Child Care Stabilization Grant funds through a separate process to child development facilities that have additional needs that were not covered by their initial awards, and who are not receiving financial assistance through the Access to Quality Child Care Grant or Back-to-Work Child Care Grant.
Contact For questions about Child Care Grants, please email childcareDC@liifund.org.
Learn more about other grant opportunities.