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Building Child Care Capacity and Innovation: Evaluating the Impact to Date of the Child Care Capacity Accelerator in Kansas
Sprague-Jones, Jessica Gardner, Sara Akin Tas, Merve
Sprague-Jones, Jessica
Gardner, Sara
Akin Tas, Merve
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Abstract
Kansas is undergoing an ambitious effort to expand access to child care. Much of the state has been in a child care desert for decades, made especially challenging by its rural nature. Currently, child care supply meets 49% of the potential demand, and an estimated 37% to 44% of Kansans live in a child care desert (Child Care Aware of Kansas, 2024). The shortage of infant and toddler slots is particularly pronounced, with no licensed openings for infants and toddlers in 15 of Kansas’ 105 counties. In 40 counties, there are 11 or more children under the age of three for every opening (Child Care Aware of America, 2023). The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated child care shortages, especially for those most in need, making the child care sector a greater public priority than ever before (All In For Kansas Kids, 2024a).
In 2023, the Kansas Children’s Cabinet and Trust Fund (Kansas Children’s Cabinet) launched a grant opportunity to address these long-standing shortages. The purpose was to accelerate the capacity of communities to meet their child care needs. The Kansas Child Care Capacity Accelerator (CCCA) has provided funding to 63 communities to build or renovate spaces, as well as support operational expenses to create additional licensed child care spots. Currently, the CCCA grantees have completed one year of project implementation.
Ensuring families have access to child care is a core focus of the state’s strategic plan for improving the early childhood ecosystem (All In For Kansas Kids, 2024b). The CCCA grant opportunity represents a coordinated effort to make meaningful progress on this complex issue by providing communities with financial resources to take direct action and generate novel solutions.
This report presents the results and insights gained from the work of CCCA grantees at the end of their first year of implementation and, in some cases, their first and only year of support. We begin by providing background on the CCCA grant opportunity, including details on the distribution and needs of recipients across the state. The methods section outlines the evaluation design and data used by the evaluation team to assess the effectiveness and impact of the program. We share results from the evaluation, including statewide and grantee-level outcomes. To date, 3,340 new licensed child care slots have been opened through the CCCA, and we anticipate a total of 5,655 new child care slots will be created over the life of the grant. Additionally, 448 new early childhood professionals have been hired to date, and 22 projects across the state have been completed in the past year. The report concludes with lessons learned and recommendations for designing and implementing future funding opportunities.
Description
Date
2024-11
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Center for Published Partnerships and Research, University of Kansas
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Keywords
Child care, Public-private partnerships, Community-based approach, Impact report
Citation
University of Kansas Center for Public Partnerships and Research. (2024). Building child care capacity and innovation: Evaluating the impact to date of the Child Care Capacity Accelerator in Kansas. Prepared on behalf of the Kansas Children’s Cabinet and Trust Fund. https://hdl.handle.net/1808/36298