Investing in Children and Families

• Starting in January 2025, expanded the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) to help more families by raising the household income limit to 261 percent of the federal poverty level ($67,390 for a family of three in 2024), the highest level in state history. This policy will enable a two-parent family with one child, where both parents are working full-time and earning $16 per hour, to qualify for child-care assistance. In addition, Expanded eligibility for CCAP to student-parents enrolled in a degree program at CCRI, RIC, and URI.  Part-time college credit hours can be combined with part-time employment hours to establish child care need hours for families pursuing higher education.
  • Expanded eligibility for CCAP to early childhood educators and staff. This extended pilot program provides a higher income threshold, 300 percent of the federal poverty level, to applicants who are employed with licensed RI child care programs. This pilot allows more educators and staff to receive child care benefits required for them to remain in the early childhood workforce and assists child care programs with recruitment and retention of quality educators.
  • Increased the CCAP reimbursement rate for infants and toddlers by 20 percent in July of 2025. Recognizing the unique challenges to providing quality care for our youngest learners, this increase will support providers in maintaining and increasing capacity for infant toddler care.

• Prioritized the retention and attraction of early educators using several innovative compensation strategies. These include the Step Up to WAGE$ pilot with tiered bonuses based on educational attainment for over 270 employees as of September 2025, as well as enhanced TEACH pathways that have provided low-cost pathways to attaining early childhood degrees and/or certificates in the state’s higher education institutions to almost 350 educators since 2023. In October 2025, the Department of Human Services (DHS) transitioned from the Step Up to WAGE$ pilot to the WAGE$ model to continue to support this initiative in 2026.
• Expanded access to high-quality early childhood care and education by nearly doubling funding for Rhode Island Pre-K under the McKee Administration, including an $8 million increase in FY 2024 and a $7.2 million increase in FY 2025, resulting in growth in Pre-K capacity from 1,420 seats in FY 2020 to 2,809 seats in FY 2026.
• Fully funded the EI rate implementation in the FY 2025 enacted budget, allotting $3.8 million to facilitate 100 percent of OHIC-recommended EI increases from a 2023 study. Implementation began on October 1, 2024.
• Increased the capacity of early childhood education settings, including helping more than 80 new Family Child Care providers open through the Family Child Care Start-up Grant program.
• Boosted the RI Works program benefits by 20 percent in FY 2025, offering crucial financial relief to approximately 8,700 low-income families with children under 18 years old. 

• Received national accreditation of the Rhode Island Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) through the Council on Accreditation from Social Current, becoming the first state in New England to receive the designation.
• Acquired the North Providence property formerly known as St. Mary’s Home for Children in December 2025, marking a major step toward establishing a state-owned Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility.
• Progressed construction on a new female adolescent residential treatment campus on state-owned land in Exeter. The 16-bed facility will provide a new Rhode Island-based option to address the behavioral health needs of female youth ages 13 to 18. Construction is scheduled for completion in Spring 2026. 

• Relaunched DCYF’s Be an Anchor online resource, Rhode Island’s community engagement campaign designed to recruit and retain foster families. The page serves as an informational hub to educate, support, and connect families with the resources needed to care for children and youth in foster care.
• Adopted updated DCYF Foster Care and Pre-Adoptive Regulations in June 2025, modernizing terminology, clarifying licensing standards, and strengthening requirements related to home safety, health and respite care, extracurricular activities, first aid and CPR training, discipline, and emergency and disaster preparedness.
• Joined the National Partnership for Child Safety in April 2025, committing DCYF to a nationally recognized safety-science framework to prevent child maltreatment fatalities and near fatalities through data sharing, peer learning, and workforce-strengthening practices.
• Was selected as one of six states to participate in the Council of State Governments’ Collaborating for Youth and Public Safety Initiative, advancing statewide strategies to reduce unnecessary juvenile justice involvement, address youth violence and behavioral health needs, and strengthen community-based prevention and intervention services.
• Successfully submitted the state’s Families First Prevention Services Plan to invest in evidence-based prevention practices, focusing on increasing family stability and well-being to prevent entry into the foster care system. Work is underway to submit an amendment aimed at expanding and refining the plan, including the addition of new evidence-based programs and the opening of community pathways, with a target submission date in January 2026. To support these initiatives, DCYF has completed training for supervisors for a fidelity monitoring tool for Motivational Interviewing and is preparing for a train-the-trainer session in 2026.

• Implemented a competitive Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) System of Care Expansion and Sustainability Grant, providing over $2 million to support Family Service of Rhode Island and Tides Family Services to provide mobile response and stabilization services (MRSS) for children, over $2 million in funding to support the Community Care Alliance to provide community-based intensive care programming for children, over $675,000 to support family engagement through a partnership with the Parent Support Network (PSN) as the Family Engagement Organization for the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS). PSN employs two Lead Family Coordinators, who play a crucial role in developing and implementing the Children’s Behavioral Health System of Care. Grant funds have also supported data collection, performance evaluation, and key staff positions at EOHHS. 
• Expanded Mobile Response and Stabilization Services (MRSS) statewide through Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics beginning October 1, 2024, after serving more than 1,100 children and youth during its first two years. The vast majority of participants remained safely in their communities without hospitalization or law-enforcement involvement, demonstrating the program’s effectiveness. Beginning January 2026, all commercial insurers will cover MRSS, and starting October 2026 it will operate as a statewide standalone Medicaid-funded service.
• Continued to implement the Community-Based Intensive Care program (CBIC). CBIC is an intensive home and community-based service carried out by Community Care Alliance (CCA) and Tides Family Services. The program supports children and youth with the most complex behavioral health difficulties to ensure they can remain safely at home or to transition home from psychiatric hospitalizations or intensive residential programs. Since its official launch in February 2024 through December 2025, the CBIC team has served 44 cases.