Mississippi Child Care Transformation Project

Mississippi was recently awarded a Preschool Development Grant Birth to Five (PDG B-5) Renewal totaling over $30 million, which will be disbursed over the next three years to improve access to high-quality early child care and education programs.

The grant will allow for the creation of a new Quality Support System with input from parents and providers focused on strengthening family and provider input to ensure Mississippi’s early care and education system is more responsive to all children and families’ needs.

It will also fund a new grant opportunity to address Child Care deserts and low-income communities’ opportunity for local public-private strategies to increase compensation and create new pathways for recruitment into the early childhood care workforce.

The PDG B-5 Grant is based on the strategic plan developed by the Mississippi Department of Human Services (MDHS) Division of Early Childhood Care and Development and other partners, including the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE), the Mississippi Early Childhood Inclusion Center (MECIC), The Children’s Foundation of Mississippi, and Mississippi State University Social Science Research Center (SSRC).

 PDG B-5 Grant: Mississippi Child Care

Transformation Project 

Learn more about our partners

Mississippi Department of Education Early Childhood

Mississippi State Social Science Research

The Children’s Foundation of Mississippi

Mississippi Early Childhood Inclusion Center

Contact Us  

Information sessions Zoom- Meeting Registration – Zoom

If you have any questions, please contact DECCD at (800) 877-7882

FAQs:

A. The Preschool Development Grant Birth – Five Renewal Grant (PDG B5-R) funding comes from the renewal of the federal Preschool Development Grant (PDG) administered by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Office of Child Care. Mississippi will receive over $30 million during the course of the three-year grant project period

A. The grant period is three years, from 2023 to 2025, with the first-year grant allocated at $10.3 million. Subsequent awards will be announced prior to each funding year.

A. More details on expansion grants will be released in upcoming months.

A. There are many activities associated with the grant that provide opportunities for involvement for parents and providers. In first six months, a major focus is the expansion of the Child Care and Development Strategic Plan to include implementation activities. Input is needed from a broad cross-section of participants to assure the success and sustainability of the efforts. To learn more see the PDG B5-R Overview in the grant

A. The MDHS Division of Early Childhood Care & Development and other partners will be announcing activities associated with the PDG B5-R in upcoming meetings and via email. Please visit the PDG B5-R webpage at: Early Childhood Care & Development – | MS Dept. Human Services to stay updated on all PDG B5-R related information. MDHS will also host virtual information sessions regarding PDG B5-R activities. Please visit https://www.mdhs.ms.gov/eccd/information-sessions/ to register for upcoming sessions and to listen to past sessions.

A. Division of Early Childhood Care and Development (DECCD) is revamping the existing quality improvement system into a quality support system. Child Care providers will play a major role in providing feedback on the current system and provide input on how the new support system will be structured, including how our state should measure quality in early childhood, how child care providers should be recognized for their hard work on this front, and how they can be supported in continuing to offer the best possible care and education for Mississippi’s children.

A. Mississippi families in need of quality early childhood care and education and the providers who seek to build quality care services by working with the network of support services and resources available in the state are the primary beneficiaries. Specifically, prioritizing serving communities whose children have the greatest needs, certain locales have been chosen to receive subgrants that will increase the number of high-functioning and sustainable family support and early childhood care and education infrastructures and services. On a larger scale, all of Mississippi benefits. Building a system of quality care not only supports the small businesses that feed Mississippi’s economy, but also provides jobs in the state, and gives families the option of entering the workforce with the certainty that their children are receiving quality care. Without such care, the state loses millions of dollars annually. Almost half of all Mississippi’s children (48%) live in a child care desert. Mississippi is the fourth most rural state in the U.S., and 60% of Mississippi’s rural children live in a child care desert. Further, the lowest access to child care correlates with counties with the lowest incomes.

A. The main goals of the PDG Renewal Grant are as follows:
· Provide up-to-date information on the status of young children in Mississippi that can be used to inform decision-making at the state, community, and program levels, with an emphasis on improving capacity in rural communities;
· Create stronger community-level infrastructure for helping families learn about available early childhood programming, and for connecting families to the services they need;
· Expand efforts to engage with families, obtain information about their needs, inform them about child development, and connect them to beneficial services for their young children;
· Strengthen the early childhood workforce through a coherent set of professional development (PD) initiatives and by providing meaningful incentives to stay and grow in the field;
· Improve services for infants and toddlers for their first five years, and strengthen the transition into kindergarten;
· Build a stronger, more collaborative state system with updated governance and finance policies that support community-level leadership;
· Inform the Mississippi public about the importance of child development, the impact of the grant, and the state’s investment in early childhood; and
· Evaluate results that inform continuous quality improvement.

A. A coordinated web of organizations and programs operating at both the state and local levels work closely with local community representatives to implement the PDG B5-R grant. The downloadable document below shows the partners, projects, and their leads who are involved with the preschool development grant.