Future Analysis
Users may view results by care-level through the menu button in the top-right corner and may turn on-and-off provider layers. To view providers who report a lower Occupancy Rate and a waiting list, turn off the “Provider” layer and maintain the “Low Occupancy, Waiting List” layer.
While interpreting results, please note the following:
- Occupancy Rate greater than 100%. Most likely indicates providers who enroll children in shifts (i.e., two part-time children using one full-time slot) or a data entry error.
- Occupancy Rate below 80% and waiting list. Provides evidence that for some providers, the lower Occupancy Rate is not caused by limited demand but instead by an internal business factor which limits capacity, such as challenges in maintaining workforce.
- Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten
- Head Start & Early Head Start
- Women Infants and Children (WIC)
- Child Welfare
- Housing Choice Voucher Program*
*Programs required to be included under Florida Chapter 2021-87 in the ESSA
- School Readiness Program*
- Medicaid*
- Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)*
- Temporary Cash Assistance (TCA)*
Analyses
The following analyses will be published on the Sunshine Portal as they are completed. Each will be presented with findings connected to geographic locations and presented as interactive maps and charts.
1. Analyses describing the population and available services
These analyses will describe support services and population characteristics. They will utilize various descriptive statistics and include information on:
- Common family compositions and structures
- Most prevalent income bracket(s) served by program type
- Reason(s) for eligibility
- Common combinations of public benefit program participation
- Number of participants served, by service and by geographic area
- Percentage of participants who participated and the number of services they used
2. Analyses identifying how the population uses services
3. Analyses measuring the extent of existing benefits cliffs
A benefits cliff occurs when a family’s income has increased enough to lose eligibility for support services, but not enough to cover the assets obtained from participating in that service. This results in an overall decrease in net income. These analyses will probe the extent to which families experience benefits cliffs in Florida.
4. Analyses modeling differential outcomes
These analyses will detect salient subgroups of children and families with different socio-environmental characteristics and service-use profiles (e.g., School Readiness voucher, Medicaid, etc.) and model differential outcomes (e.g., self-sufficiency, kindergarten readiness). The research team will use regression mixtures to identify optimal ways to model the differential effects of child-health and socio-environmental profiles on access to early intervention services. The goal will be to not only understand differential access to services, but to also uncover subgroups of substantively different profiles of risk and resilience across the state. This will lead to policy recommendations for targeted intervention at the local level. For example, low-access areas would indicate that children with high-risk profiles have a lower likelihood of receiving early intervention services.
5. Other relevant analyses
As requested by the Division of Early Learning and identified as necessary by the Sunshine Portal research team.