Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF)

FUNDING AMOUNT

FEDERAL: $17,162,044 AND $2,404,776; STATE: $44,372,405

Authority

CCDF is the finance mechanism that funds Nebraska’s child care subsidy program (previously called Title XX). Separate federal- and state-level funding streams are combined to subsidize the cost of child care for children of low-income parents. Authorization of funds originates from four sources: 1) discretionary funding authorized by the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act, subject to annual appropriation; (2) an entitlement portion of mandatory and matching funds made available under Section 418 of the Social Security Act; (3) state Maintenance of Effort (MOE) and matching funds; and (4) federal funds transferred to CCDF from states’ Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grants. Statutorily, the CCDBG was first enacted under the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 and then was amended and reauthorized by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996, the act that also established TANF block grants. The most recent reauthorization of the CCDBG was under the CCDBG Act of 2014.vii

Establishing the Funding Estimates

Funds for Nebraska’s child care subsidy program, labeled as “subprogram 44 child care for 341 public assistance,” reside within a larger pot of public assistance funds. Historically, the raw data provided included funding for children up to the age of 12 and a series of evidence-based assumptions were applied to arrive at an estimate of the dollars allocated for children ages 0–5. For the current FY 2021 report, data were disaggregated and a Public Records and Discovery Attorney at the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Servicesviii reported the 0–5 funding separately by source: