DHS Announces A Public Hearing and that you Should Not Listen To Unofficial Sources

DHS Announces A Public Hearing and that you Should Not Listen To Unofficial Sources

DHS has announced that on April 12, 2017, MDHS made minor updates to the CCPP Policy manual to:

• Allow MDHS to begin the process of designating centers as standard and comprehensive under Mississippi’s early childhood plan, “A Family-Based Unified and Integrated Early Childhood System.”

• Replace terms such as “licensed” and “unlicensed” with the more appropriate term “CCPP-approved.”

However, due to many request for a public hearing, a public hearing will be held to collect public comments on only the updates submitted on April 12 to the CCPP policy manual. (The date has not been announced.)

Reimbursement rates are still being determined.

To view the eligibility process of  “A Family-Based Unified and Integrated Early Childhood System”, click here:

“To ensure quality of early learning program and service delivery for children, a center must maintain its eligibility to be designated as either standard or comprehensive following the general recommendations by the SECAC committees (see Appendices A-C). Each year centers will go through an initial eligibility process and subsequent annual redetermination processes. Any center that fails to meet the basic requirements for its designation will be given six months to successfully implement a corrective action plan. The corrective action plan will be developed by an external evaluator in consultation with the child care center director and technical assistance coach. Failing to reach goals outlined in a corrective action plan will result in loss of designation at the end of the current annual eligibility term. Comprehensive centers could be downgraded to standard if the center still meets the minimum requirements for that designation. Any center no longer designated at the standard level will be ineligible to redeem child care vouchers until the center is deemed eligible in the future.

 

Once eligible, centers must engage in continuous quality improvement based on a scale that assesses the extent to which a center should engage in additional technical assistance for maintaining and improving quality. Standard and comprehensive centers will be scored on type-specific scales that reflect the expectations for each center designation. Each scale will include environmental-quality factors, process-quality factors, and factors related to the center experience of parents and their children. Quality evaluation will also include a parent satisfaction survey seeking input in several areas that best describe the quality of the experience of parents and their children. The survey will be conducted as part of there (sic) determination process. Comprehensive centers will additionally be scored on the assessment of the children and the results of an external evaluation. The scale will be designed to help identify areas where centers need technical assistance for maintaining and improving quality so that centers can maintain their eligibility to redeem vouchers. Each continuous quality improvement plan will be unique based on a child care center’s strengths, needs, and program-specific goals. Scale scores will not be used to rank or grade centers for comparison across centers, unlike the case with the quality rating system, and will only be used to determine appropriate quality-improvement activities and need for technical assistance that will lead to measurable improvement in services and help centers maintain eligibility to redeem vouchers.”

 

 

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