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administrative region, where a potential gap exists, the number of family child care providers in that region lags behind 4 of the 6 regions. For those family providers, 90 percent are licensed to serve infants, and 98 percent are licensed to serve toddlers. So, while the family child care providers in that region are largely available to provide care to infant and toddlers, there may not be enough family childcare relative to other regions. To address the potential gap in question, the Lead Agency has increased subsidy rates for infant and toddler care, provides technical assistance specifically for implementing best practices in infants and toddlers, offers business support through the Thriving Child Care Business Academy online platform of free training and resources to give owners and administrators the knowledge and tools to enhance their financial management skills with the goal of making their centers and family homes thriving child care businesses, and continuous improvement of the child care licensing process to ease the potential burdens related to becoming a licensed child care program serving infants and toddlers. iv. What is the plan to address the child care shortages using child care centers? For licensed child care learning centers in the state, 75 percent are licensed for infant care and 81 percent are licensed for toddler care. In the northeast administrative region, where a potential gap exists, the number of child care center providers in that region lags behind 3 of the 6 regions. For those center providers, 71 percent are licensed to serve infants, and 76 percent are licensed to serve toddlers. So, child care center providers in that region are less likely to be available to provide care to infant and toddlers than the statewide average and lag most other regions. To address the potential gap in question, the Lead Agency has increased subsidy rates for infant and toddler care, provides technical assistance specifically for implementing best practices in infant and toddler classrooms, offers business support through the Thriving Child Care Business Academy online platform of free training and resources to give owners and administrators the knowledge and tools to enhance their financial management skills with the goal of making their centers and family homes thriving child care businesses, and continuous improvement of the child care licensing process to ease the potential burdens related to becoming a licensed child care program serving infants and toddlers.

b. In different regions of the State or Territory: i. Data sources used to identify shortages: The Lead Agency houses an internal Research and Policy Analysis Team that conducts ongoing analyses using existing administrative data and publicly available data to evaluate supply and demand. Enhanced access to data has been enabled with the development of a child care supply and demand data tool. The tool brings in demand-side data by using publicly available data sources and applying methodologies to create modeled population characteristics in great detail to include: total child population for age 0 through 13 in the state; child population by each age group, house hold income, and house hold employment; for each of those elements the geographic distribution of the child population by Lead Agency administrative region, county, state house district, state senate district, school district, and zip code tabulation area (ZCTA) that aligns with the census; for each of those elements the measure of