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7 Support Continuous Quality Improvement

Lead Agencies are required to reserve and 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. States and territories are required to report on these quality improvement investments through CCDF in three ways:

1. In the Plan, states and territories will describe the types of activities supported by quality investments over the 3-year period (658G(b); 98.16(j)).

2. ACF will collect annual data on how much CCDF funding is spent on quality activities using the expenditure report (ACF-696). This report will be used to determine compliance with the required quality and infant and toddler spending requirements (658G(d)(1); 98.53(f)).

3. For each year of the Plan period, states and territories will submit a separate annual Quality Progress Report that will include a description of activities to be funded by quality expenditures and the measures used by the state/territory to evaluate its progress in improving the quality of child care programs and services within the state/territory (658G(d); 98.53(f)).

States and territories must fund efforts in at least one of the following 10 activities:

-- Supporting the training and professional development of the child care workforce

-- Improving on the development or implementation of early learning and developmental guidelines

-- Developing, implementing, or enhancing a tiered quality rating and improvement system for child care providers and services

-- Improving the supply and quality of child care programs and services for infants and toddlers

-- Establishing or expanding a statewide system of child care resource and referral services

-- Supporting compliance with state/territory requirements for licensing, inspection, monitoring, training, and health and safety (as described in section 5) Nebraska Page 267 of 314