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The Division of Child Development and Early Education is moving October 1, 2025! 

DCDEE is joining our Department of Health and Human Services colleagues in the new DHHS headquarters just across the street from the NC Museum of Art.

Our mailing address is unchanged: 2201 Mail Service Center | Raleigh, NC 27699-2200.

Our new physical address is 1915 Health Services Way, Raleigh, NC 27607.

Our last day in the Six Forks office will be September 26.

We’ll be in the new building beginning October 1 and the November 3rd Child Care Commission meeting will be held there.

The Impact of the Preschool Development Grant Birth Through Five in North Carolina

North Carolina relies on quality early childhood care and education teachers and programs to support children’s healthy development and learning, allow parents to work and keep businesses running. Yet our birth-to-five programs are in crisis – exacerbated by the pandemic but decades in the making. Even before the pandemic, 44% of North Carolina families were already living in child care deserts as investment in early childhood programs stagnated at 2011 levels. Now, North Carolina is experiencing a severe labor shortage, as parents are leaving the workforce or turning down job opportunities due to lack of access to affordable, quality child care. According to the North Carolina Chamber, the economic disruption due to insufficient child care availability costs our state $5.65 billion in lost economic activity every year.

“Child care is a textbook example of a broken market.”
 − Remarks by Janet Yellen, Former Secretary of the US Treasury
 

Child care is one of the biggest expenses that North Carolina families with young children face today. Infant care in NC costs $2,125 (28.9%) more per year than in-state tuition for a four-year public college. A study by the North Carolina Chamber found that 26% of parents with children aged five and under said they left the workforce because they couldn't find affordable child care. Families are paying as much as they can, but it is not enough to meet teachers’ basic needs for housing, food, health care and other necessities. Skilled early childhood teachers are leaving in droves for unskilled jobs in convenience stores, gas stations, restaurants and retail that pay more. Child care programs – unable to compete on equal footing with businesses in their communities – struggle  to stay open.

The Preschool Development Grant Birth Through Five (PDG B-5 ) provides critical funds for North Carolina to improve early childhood systems for children and their families. Since the program began in 2018, North Carolina has been awarded more than $75 million in PDG B-5 grants.

North Carolina PDG Activities

NC has built upon its initial year’s work to develop statewide needs assessments and action plans that include describing the populations of children who are: vulnerable or underserved, in rural areas, experiencing homelessness or English Language Learners. For example, NC identified Local IDEA Part C and Part B Section 619 stakeholders to be engaged in the strategic planning process, acknowledging them as part of the state’s mixed delivery system. These stakeholders were made part of the governance structure that is responsible for managing grant activities and day-to-day decision-making for PDG B-5.

Data is vital to policy and decision making. PDG B-5 funds the North Carolina Early Childhood Integrated Data System (NC ECIDS). NC ECIDS is the single source for early childhood integrated data for selected education, health, and social services programs to help answer key policy and program questions. NC ECIDS provides counts of children who receive multiple early childhood services from participating programs. NC continued to address its plan North Carolina Early Childhood Integrated Data System to measure the number of unduplicated children being served and awaiting services in each of their existing programs.

Supported by PDG B-5 dollars, a variety of strategies have been employed by North Carolina to increase parent and family knowledge and optimize involvement and engagement:

  • Parent leadership and family engagement training and conferences.
  • Employed transition supports for kids enrolled under IDEA programs
  • Involving culturally and diverse communities by developing and translating resource materials, inclusive trainings, and cultural events.
  • Deploying no-wrong-door strategies to provide families access to appropriate and adequate support for their needs and make timely connections to services regardless of their initial program entry point.

PDG B-5 is vital in the development of supports for the ECE Workforce.

  • Increasing child care subsidy rates to support much needed infant/toddler providers.
  • Expanding home visiting programs and pilots as strategies to improve Infant/Toddler services.
  • Allowing child care providers to use the NCCARE360 platform to electronically connect parents to community resources in a closed referral process to meet the needs of young children and support transitions

NCDHHS is dedicated to meaningfully engaging families, communities and early childhood professionals across our state in the development and implementation of our early childhood policies, procedures and initiatives. The PDG B-5 has allowed North Carolina to foster new partnerships and bolster existing ones, driving progress on key birth-five strategic planning goals such as increasing access to high-quality early care and learning services, promoting transitions to kindergarten, increasing family engagement, promoting social-emotional health, enhancing data accessibility and utilization, and supporting the early childhood workforce.

Assessments, Plans, Reports, Briefs and Tools

NC Birth-Five Needs Assessments

DCDEE in partnership with The Hunt Institute and Duke University’s Center for Child and Family Policy released an updated Birth-Five Needs Assessment in 2022.

NC Statewide Birth through Five Strategic Plan

Workforce Support

Family Child Care Homes Support

  • Family Child Care Home Subsidy Pilot Report and Presentation (coming soon)

Building Family Engagement and Leadership

Action Plan for an Early Childhood Homelessness Support System

Program Performance Evaluations

 

 

 

 

2201 Mail Service Center | Raleigh, NC 27699-2200
919-814-6300 | 1-800-859-0829 (In State Only)
[email protected]

 

 
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