Blending and Braiding Funds
F i n a n c i n g S t r a t e g y S e r i e s ✷
Ja n u a r y 2 0 0 3
To Support Early Care and Education Initiatives
| 3
n recent years, both the public and private
sectors have made significant new invest-
ments in early care and education. These
investments are largely a response to grow-
ing awareness of the importance of early
experiences to brain development and school success,
and to new demands for and attention to the need for
child care for working families. Unfortunately, how-
ever, differing priorities and a lack of sufficient
resources mean that these investments have primarily
created or expanded categorical programs that nar-
rowly define eligibility and services and operate
separately from each other. Rather than representing
a coherent early care and education system, they are
a patchwork of disjointed programs with different
emphases, requirements, and funding mechanisms.
A number of trends, however, are pushing states and
communities to bring together traditionally separate
services and programs and to create more integrated
and responsive initiatives for young children and their
families.Welfare reform has highlighted the need for
quality, full-day, full-year early childhood programs.
In an effort to provide full-time care to children in
Head Start (which has traditionally been part-day,
part-year), states and communities are fostering new
partnerships between child care and Head Start pro-
grams. At the same time, the growth in state
investment in prekindergarten programs is leading to
new collaborations among schools and the Head
Start and child care providers surrounding them. In
addition, state and local governments and private
funders have invested in community-driven initiatives
Blending and Braiding Funds
To Support Early Care and Education Initiatives
By Margaret Flynn and
Cheryl D. Hayes
I
4 | Blending and Braiding Funds
that bring together stakeholders to assess needs and
develop more comprehensive and coordinated services
that are responsive to the need