The Illinois/New York Child Care Research Partnership Study (CCRPS) joins researchers at the University of Chicago and the Urban Institute with state and local administrators of child care subsidies in four regions of Illinois and New York. Specifically, the study involves participants in Westchester and Nassau Counties in New York State and in two regions in Illinois (SDA 6, Cook County/Chicago and SDA 14, 7 county areas around Granite City). CCRPS is a multi-year project, funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families.

The partnership’s primary aim is to engage in research efforts that result in the development of an empirically-informed and practically-relevant knowledge base regarding the key determinants of child care subsidy stability and the factors that increase subsidized families’ access to high quality, stable child care arrangements. Identifying the policy levers that help low-income families access high quality, stable, and affordable child care is critical to supporting parental employment and positive child development.

Phase 1 (2010 – 2014) examines how subsidy program characteristics and employment circumstances operate to encourage or discourage subsidy receipt and subsidy stability, and in turn, how subsidy experiences contribute to child care arrangement (dis)continuity.

Phase 2 (2013 – 2017) focuses on the provider- and subsidy program-related factors that impede families’ access to quality, stable care arrangements and investigates strategies that can successfully integrate subsidized providers into quality improvement efforts.