About Us

Mission

The National Research Center on Hispanic Children & Families (Center) conducts research to inform programs and policy to better serve Hispanic children and families with low incomes. Our research focuses on poverty reduction and economic self-sufficiency; child care and early education, including federal programs such as Head Start (HS) and the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF); and cross-cutting topics that include parenting, family structure, and family dynamics. A key part of our mission is to build research capacity to inform policy and service delivery by providing tools, resources, and support for emerging scholars. The Center is led by Child Trends, in partnership with Duke University, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and University of Maryland, College Park. The Center is supported by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Child Care and Education

Our research in this area seeks to better understand access and delivery to ECE for Hispanic families with low incomes across multiple dimensions. We examine:

National and local trends in non-parental care use among infants, toddlers, and preschoolers
ECE cost and affordability
Characteristics of high-quality care for Latino families as related to Head Start and CCDF
The training, experience, and characteristics of the child care and early education workforce serving Hispanic children
How ECE providers meet the needs of employed parents
How Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) policies are being implemented for low-income Hispanic families
How Head Start (HS) programs engage and support Hispanic children and families, including dual language learners

Parenting, Family Structure, and Family Dynamics

Our research in this area examines Hispanic family life and programmatic efforts intended to support family functioning. We examine:

The early learning environments of Latino children
Family formation and dissolution patterns and household characteristics of Latino children in households with low incomes
Parent engagement, family relationships, and household resources, and their links to child wellbeing

Poverty Reduction and Self-Sufficiency

Our research in this area seeks to better understand the economic characteristics and resources of Hispanic parents and families, the contributing role of policy and practice on economic well-being by shaping access to and use of social services, and the implications for children’s health and well-being. We examine:

Variation in how Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and related social policies are designed and implemented across states with large populations of Hispanic families and children with low incomes
Education and economic mobility of Hispanic parents
How programs, policies, and initiatives for poverty reduction may have different consequences, opportunities and implications among Hispanic families, who represent a high proportion of those earning a low income

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Data Improvement

Our work supports and informs ACF’s data and data improvement initiatives to improve access to programs for Latino families. This involves supporting ongoing improvements related to the quality, usefulness, sharing, and analysis of program administrative data, with the goal of enhancing service delivery to Hispanic participants in ACF programs. This work includes the following:

Identifying strengths and limitations of existing systems/data to understand uptake of CCDF among Latino populations
Reaching out to state decision-makers and administrative data staff to better understand how data relevant to Latino diversity is collected and by whom, challenges in collecting/reporting these data elements, and capacity to add new data elements to better understand segments of the Latino population
Making recommendations to assist in understanding access to services among Latino families in ways that better reflect the diversity of Latino families