Kansas Early Head Start - Child Care Partnership Grant

Grants to Kansas qualifying nonprofit early childhood programs to increase the quality of the care provided. Applicants must submit a letter of intent prior to submitting a full application. Funding is intended to give young children from high-need areas the best early education possible.

The purpose of this program is to provide Child Care Development Funds (CCDF) to Federally recognized Early Head Start Programs to implement comprehensive services to childcare partner programs which exhibit need, desire to participate, and have willingness to follow enhanced program regulations. KEHS grantees may also offer their own center-based classes.

Programs should contain design elements that may include the following program goals and outcomes.

• The KEHS grantee shall be responsible for providing direct services that support the implementation of evidence-based strategies that result in improvements in targeted state or community-level factors, while also contributing to state and local outcomes as indicated below:
• Child outcomes indicated by children demonstrating age appropriate levels in all domains of development and children are physically and mentally healthy.
• Parent and family outcomes indicated by parents demonstrating knowledge and skills related to child development, parenting practices and access to Early Head Start Services.
• Families are stable and supportive, and parents are working, enrolled in school or a job training program.
• Quarterly performance measures for Status Reports will include:
• 95% of the children will be screened within 45 days of enrollment.
• 95% of the families will have an active family partnership plan within 45 days of enrollment.
• Community needs assessment for upcoming fiscal year.

Priority will be given to grantees willing to provide service in their service area that have been listed as high need counties within their service area. Fifty-two (52) high priority counties have been identified based on high poverty, unemployment and out of home placement data. The data collected for the high priority counties includes high poverty, high unemployment, high out of home placement (OOHP). Applying equal weight to the data points, DCF identified the top half of counties with the highest at-risk index scores.

If funding limitations occur, priority will be given to applicants that serve these high need priority counties. The high priority counties are: Allen, Atchison, Barber, Barton, Bourbon, Brown, Butler, Chase, Chautauqua, Cherokee, Clark, Cloud, Coffey, Comanche, Cowley, Crawford, Dickinson, Doniphan, Douglas, Edwards, Elk, Franklin, Graham, Greenwood, Harper, Jackson, Kingman, Labette, Lincoln, Linn, Lyon, Montgomery, Morton, Neosho, Osage, Pawnee, Phillips, Pratt, Reno, Rice, Rush, Russell, Saline,  Sedgwick, Seward, Shawnee, Sherman, Stafford, Sumner, Wilson, Woodson, and Wyandotte.