Tribal Child Care Data and Research Capacity Awards

The Tribal Child Care Data and Research Capacity Awards (Phase I) will support partnerships between Tribal (CCDF) Lead Agencies and research and coordinating organizations to develop and improve tribal data systems and strengthen capacity-building of Tribal CCDF Lead Agencies. Sponsored projects will identify, collect, analyze, and use early childhood data to complete research activities guiding policy and program improvement efforts. Specifically, projects will explore: (1) questions of interest to local tribal communities and ACF to investigate tribal child care policies and practices; (2) data sources available to answer questions of interest and assess the accessibility of those data; (3) possible data sources from other tribal and local data systems for linking; and (4) the barriers and opportunities to collecting, analyzing, and using data to inform tribal child care policy decisions and CCDF administrative practices.Activities under the planning grants include development of a plan for identifying, linking, and using tribal early childhood data to inform child care policy decisions, as well as a plan for sharing and disseminating information with partnering agencies and organizations. The awards would be 18-month grants, with one (1) 18-month budget period (i.e., September 2025 – March 2027). These awards would fund the development of a data and research plan under a planning phase a to address questions of interest to the Tribal CCDF Lead Agency. These planning grants may be followed by a second competition (Phase II), under a separate Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) to support execution of the data and research plans to develop and improve state/territory data systems and conduct research to inform priorities for the Tribal organizations and populations. Sponsored projects will be expected to participate in a consortium that will meet and communicate regularly to identify opportunities for coordination, such as to share facilitators and barriers to identifying and using early childhood data and methods for linking data across systems, and to develop collective expertise and resources for the field. The consortium’s collaboration will support research capacity and learning within individual projects and across grantees. Funding is subject to availability of funds and the best interests of the federal government.