The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), also known as the Child Care and Development Block Grant, is the federal–state flagship program that provides child care assistance to families with low incomes who need to work. In 2023, it supported 994,000 US families so parents could afford to work or attend school and helped 1.6 million children receive the care they need to stay safe and support their healthy development.

Why This Matters

Operating as a block grant, states have the flexibility to determine the policies and practices that best reflect their priorities for families within broad federal parameters. However, despite strong evidence of its effectiveness as a key work support, current funding levels enable states to serve only 16 percent of families who are eligible under federal law, or 20 percent of those eligible under the tighter state guidelines.

Key Takeaways

This brief shows how CCDF does the following:

• Supports parental choice by allowing parents to choose from a range of caregivers, including both secular and faith-based child care centers, as well as the full range of home-based options from licensed family child care to relative caregivers. Urban research shows that state flexibility has enabled meaningful participation by relative caregivers, but expanding the use of relative caregivers requires sufficient funding, administrative capacity, provider supports, and accountability systems.
• Supports parental choice by helping providers meet the needs of all families. CCDF makes parental choice more of a reality by helping parents pay for child care, including care that is often in short supply, such as care for infants and toddlers or children with disabilities, or care for families who live in rural areas or areas of concentrated lower income. Research suggests that low reimbursement rates resulting from inadequate funding can limit provider participation in the subsidy system and thus reduce parental choice. Policies that pay providers adequately, accurately, and predictably can strengthen provider participation and expand family options.
• Builds stability for children and parents with family-friendly policies. Urban research documented how frequent eligibility redeterminations increased burdens on families and administrators, disrupted employment, and contributed to instability in children's care arrangements. Reforms included in the 2014 CCDF reauthorization aimed to reduce these burdens, strengthen subsidy stability, and support continuity in work and child care, reflecting the needs expressed by families.
• Helps parents work and move toward self-sufficiency and reduces child poverty. Supporting parental employment and self-sufficiency is a central goal of CCDF. In 2023, 85 percent of participating families qualified because parents were working, and most families were headed by single parents. Research shows that child care assistance helps parents maintain employment and that expanding subsidies to more eligible families could reduce child care barriers to work and lower child poverty.

How We Did It

This brief highlights 25 years of Urban research that has demonstrated the critical role CCDF policies and practices can play, not only in helping parents work and attend school while keeping their children safe but also in supporting parental choice by helping parents access a range of caregivers, setting provider payment levels and policies that encourage provider participation, and establishing family-friendly policies that stabilize the lives of children and families.