_{Major Accomplishments}  

    _{Our study of employers of child care subsidy recipients in Florida (supported by the Florida Children’s Forum) led to the passage of the Child Care Partnership Act (currently funded at $14 million per year) in Florida. This study has been replicated in Miami-Dade County, Alabama, California, Oregon and Washington, DC.  The Oregon Child Care Research Partnership provides a valuable summary and synthesis of these studies in} Parents Receiving Child Care Subsidies: Where Do They Work? A View from Four States and the District of Columbia (1) 

    _{Our work on the price and quality of infant care in Miami Dade County led to an increase in reimbursement rates for infant care.}

     _{Supplementary funding received from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was used to develop a methodology to estimate the unmet need for child care in local communities and to equip and train Resource and Referral agency personnel in the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS).}

     _{Supplementary funding by Alabama businesses and foundations was used to study who employs child care subsidy recipients.}

     _{Through publications, national conference presentations, and workshops partnership researchers introduced Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to child care and family support agencies and provided training to child care personnel in Massachusetts in the use of GIS. Massachusetts now uses GIS regularly to display the waiting list for child care. The Commonwealth’s child care administrators have found that GIS communicates effectively to the state legislature the need for increased funding for child care subsidies.}

     _{Research findings that showed that increased funding for child care subsidies increased the earnings of low-income families were instrumental in getting additional child care subsidy funding for low-income families (those not receiving cash assistance) in Florida.}

      _{Research findings that showed that increased funding for child care subsidies increased the probability that current and former cash assistance recipients would work have been used nationally to obtain additional funding for child care subsidies for cash assistance recipients.}

     _{The state of Rhode Island (RI) provided funding for Partnership researchers to evaluate their comprehensive package of family supports (i.e., child care subsidies, support for child care providers, food stamps, medical assistance and cash assistance). The Partnership has evaluated the effects of RI welfare reform on the employment and earnings of parents and the impact of RI early care and education initiative on the accessibility, availability and quality of child care.}

     _{Our research methods to determine the impact of child care subsidies on the employment and earnings trajectory of low-income families was replicated in Texas by researchers at the Ray Marshall Center for the Study of Human Resources at the University of Texas at Austin.}

     _{Our method of taking “monthly snapshots” of child care subsidy and administrative records for policy research in Massachusetts and Florida has been adopted in research in Illinois, Maryland, and Rhode Island.}

     _{With funding from the Florida Children’s Forum, which helped with the administrative costs of the partnership in the first years, and a grant supplement from the Child Care Bureau, we have been able to expand our research in Florida from Miami-Dade County to four additional representative areas of the state, including Broward County (the Ft. Lauderdale area), Pinellas County (the St Petersburg area), Duval County (the Jacksonville area) and the seven Panhandle counties (the Tallahassee area).}