Focus Areas/Projects

Access to High-Quality Early Learning/Family Support 

Child Welfare and Part C Early Intervention Collaboration 

This project examines approaches to supporting the developmental and mental health needs of infants and toddlers involved in child welfare through collaboration with Part C Early Intervention Early Care and Education Suspension and Expulsion Prevention Policy. This project highlights opportunities, strategies, and current state efforts to prevent suspension and expulsion of children in early care and education settings.

Early Childhood Two-Generation State Policy Profiles 

The Early Childhood Two-Generation State Policy Profiles provide a state-by-state picture of the population of young children and the policy choices that states make across three areas: health and development, early care and education, and family economic support. 

Improving Participation of Children in Foster Care in Stable, High Quality Early Care and Education 

This project is focused on advancing equity in access to and delivery of stable, high quality early care and education in Arkansas for children in foster care.

New Hampshire Preschool Development Grant Needs Assessment 

The National Center for Children in Poverty collaborated with stakeholders across New Hampshire to undertake a multi-year Needs Assessment to identify the supports New Hampshire families with young children, particularly marginalized and underserved families, need and barriers to accessing those supports. 

New York Public Library Project 

NCCP has partnered with the New York Public Library to strengthen its Storytime Program, which serves families with young children. 

Family Economic Supports 

Improving Family Economic Security Through Evidence-Based State Policy Reforms

Generous economic supports for children growing up in or near poverty effectively counter potentially harmful effects on their early development and boost their life chances as adults. In many cases, state legislators and officials have the ability to set policy options that create these needed supports for parents’ and children’s well-being. To support advocates’ and policymakers’ understanding of these options, NCCP’s Family Economic Security (FES) team offers a growing set of resources to promote stronger state FES policies.

A Model Effective Marginal Tax Rate Calculator for Families and Caseworkers 

This project aims to support families’ economic mobility. Small increases in families’ earning may lead to losses of key public benefit supports, including tax credits and safety net programs (e.g., Medicaid, SNAP, Child Care Subsidies). The marginal tax rate calculator (MTRC) will be used by families and caseworkers to estimate available federal, state, and local public benefit supports and project families’ net resources as their incomes rise. 

Collaboration with Atlanta Fed to Promote Family Economic Mobility 

This project is an on-going collaboration with the Atlanta Fed to support the development of a benefit rules database, which includes policy codes and policy variables for federal rules and state variations in CCDF, SNAP, Section 8, Medicaid, ACA subsidies, TANF, LIHEAP, Head Start, federally-funded meal programs, and federal, state, and local tax credits. 

Career Ladder Identifier and Financial Forecaster (CLIFF) 

NCCP is currently partnering with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (Atlanta Fed) to support their Career Ladder Identifier and Financial Forecaster (CLIFF) initiative. 

Disability Perspectives on Paid Leave 

This project includes ground-breaking qualitative research about how workers with disabilities and working caregivers of people with disabilities and serious health conditions use, need, and benefit from family and medical leave. 

Fact Sheets about Low-Income Children 

Using data from 2015-2019, these fact sheets show the disparities in economic hardship experienced by children. These hardships have been exacerbated during the pandemic. 

Family Resource Simulator 

The first of its kind, the FRS brings modern tools to improve public benefit systems that may fall short in supporting low-income families’ economic mobility. The FRS arms decisionmakers with information about barriers to economic mobility within public benefit rules, such as cliff effects (i.e., large losses in supports due to small wage increases); interactions between eligibility rules that lead to unanticipated losses of benefits; and gaps in supports that impede employment. 

Improving Public Benefits in New Jersey 

Working with two New Jersey organizations, NCCP will create a family resource simulator specifically for New Jersey that will seek to inform pressing, actionable policy issues that could positively affect NJ’s low-income or underserved populations. 

Kansas Family Resource Simulator Project 

NCCP is expanding the Family Resource Simulator for Kansas to include 2022 policy rules specific to child care workers, and assessing the impacts of potential policy changes that provide wage supplements to child care workers. 

Kentucky Family Resource Simulator/Benefit Cliff Project 

NCCP is working to expand Kentucky’s Family Resource Simulator to include additional policies, increase its capacity to identify potential benefit cliffs, and identify policies to reduce these cliffs. 

Ohio Benefit Bridge Calculator Project 

In collaboration with the Ohio Department of Family Services (ODJFS), NCCP has developed the Benefit Bridge Calculator tool, aimed at supporting low-income families and the case managers who are helping them navigate federal and state benefit policies, specifically around Medicaid, SNAP, TANF, WIC, child care subsidies, and housing. 

Paid Family and Medical Leave Research 

NCCP has conducted research on paid family and medical leave (PFML) to identify policies that work well for low-income families with children. NCCP’s research focuses on the states that have passed their own PFML programs. 

Supporting Immigrant Families

Economic and Social Challenges of Immigrants in Long Island 

From 2017-2020, NCCP conducted a needs assessment and provided actionable recommendations to improve outreach and services for low-income immigrants residing in Long Island. Funding was provided by the New York State Office for New Americans (ONA) Community Navigator Program, through a subcontract with the Central American Refugee Center (CARECEN)

Supporting Children of Immigrants in an Era of Harsh Immigration Policy 

This research, conducted in 2018, examined key barriers to public benefits faced by low-income immigrant families in this enforcement context, and it provides strategies to mitigate these barriers. 

The Effect of State Immigration Policies on Health Care for Children of Immigrants 

This research examined whether states’ driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants and local sanctuary policies increase the likelihood that children of immigrants receive adequate health care. 

Mental Health Supports for Young Children and Parents 

PRiSM: Promoting Research-informed State Infant-Early Childhood Mental Health Policies and Scaled Initiatives 

PRiSM helps advocates and policymakers identify many of the most promising strategies states are using to promote infant-toddler mental health. PRiSM has an online, searchable collection of research-informed IECMH policies and scaled initiatives along with summaries of research about key IECMH strategies 

Arkansas’ Implementation of Suspension and Expulsion Reduction Policies (ARISE) 

This project will examine factors that support or hinder the effective implementation of Arkansas’ innovative policies to promote children’s social-emotional development and reduce expulsion in child care programs 

Child Welfare and Part C Early Intervention Collaboration 

This project examines approaches to supporting the developmental and mental health needs of infants and toddlers involved in child welfare through collaboration with Part C Early Intervention 

Early Care and Education Suspension and Expulsion Prevention Policy 

This project highlights opportunities, strategies, and current state efforts to prevent suspension and expulsion of children in early care and education settings 

Medicaid Coverage for Key IECMH Policies: Results of a Series of 50-State Surveys 

A series of 50-state policy surveys have been conducted in recent years to examine states’ Medicaid coverage for key infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH) services, along with policies that contribute to service access and quality 

Past projects can be found in the NCCP Projects Archive