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Dear State and Territory CCDF Administrators,
I’d like to express my sincere gratitude to all of you for participating in the 2025 State and Territory CCDF Administrators Meeting (STAM 2025). Your candid feedback during the listening sessions was invaluable in hearing where this administration can support the work you are engaged in to improve child care options for families across the country. Hearing your thoughts how the federal government and our Office of Early Childhood Development (ECD), which includes the Office of Child Care (OCC) and the Office of Head Start (OHS), can support innovation in your state or territory provided a critical lens for our work moving forward.
While we are quickly turning your feedback and ideas into a list of priorities for our offices, I wanted to also provide in writing an update on the 2024 Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Final Rule. We heard a lot of feedback from states and territories on the difficultly in implementing these requirements and the decisions you are having to make now around system-level investments. We are intending to address these concerns by issuing proposed CCDF rules for public comment this year, aiming to return flexibility back to the states. We look forward to hearing your feedback during this process and identifying additional areas where we can support effective implementation of the CCDBG statute. We acknowledge that states and territories may want to avoid any further spending on implementation of the 2024 rule requirements until more information on upcoming proposed rule changes is available. OCC will continue to support Lead Agencies in navigating those decisions to avoid unnecessary expenditures.
In the meantime, I encourage you to submit any additional ideas or feedback for my consideration to OCCInfo@acf.hhs.gov. We’ll continue to compile your comments to identify priorities for the cluster of ECD offices, including OCC and OHS. And we will look forward to being back in touch as we turn our planning into action.
Thank you for your continued partnership.
Laurie Todd-Smith, Ph.D.
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Early Childhood Development
Department of Health and Human Services
Administration for Children and Families
Office of Early Childhood Development
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