To disseminate findings regarding the pandemic’s impact on childcare capacity in North Carolina, NCDHHS COVID-19 Response: North Carolina Rapid COVID Response to Early Care and Education was recently published by the research-practice partnership of the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) and the Department of Child Development and Early Education (DCDEE) of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. This policy brief is part of a larger effort to engage research on evidence-based practices important to the early care and education community as well as policy makers.
 
Sandra Soliday Hong, PhD, an FPG advanced research scientist, is the lead author of the brief. Her co-authors include FPG colleagues Ronald Seifer, PhD, associate director for research, and Noreen Yazejian, PhD, senior research scientist, Kylie Garber, PhD, Society for Research in Child Development Congressional Fellow, and UNC graduate student Lindsay Gomes, MA.
 
Hong says that the goal of this project is to create a mechanism that can help shape decision making that is guided by research. “We want to create timely communication around developmental science that informs policy,” she says. She notes the importance of this brief in understanding how the early care and education system’s capacity was in decline prior to the pandemic. While the system not only rebounded but increased capacity relative to pre-pandemic periods, the emergency funds that enabled that gain are expiring at the end of this year. Researchers anticipate a delayed negative effect of the pandemic on the early care and education capacity and workforce in North Carolina once those funds expire.

“The strength of this project is that it is a true partnership,” says Yazejian. “We study issues and provide information on topics that are important to policymakers in North Carolina, which increases the chances that our work will benefit the people of North Carolina, including children, families, and early care and education staff.”  

Future briefs will focus on North Carolina’s early care and education system’s funding landscape, the federal funding streams flowing into North Carolina to feed the early care and education system, and the ways they impact the system, and early literacy and school readiness.

These topics were selected because they are issues with implications for child care programs, children, and families that came to the forefront during the pandemic. “The strength of this project is that it is a true partnership,” says Yazejian. “We study issues and provide information on topics that are important to policymakers in North Carolina, which increases the chances that our work will benefit the people of North Carolina, including children, families, and early care and education staff.”