Summary
Client: Illinois Department of Early Childhood (IDEC)
Project: Help the new Illinois Department of Early Childhood plan for the alignment of the multiple Home Visiting funding streams into a single, coherent grantmaking process. The goal is to reduce administrative burden and to set the stage for one unified funding approach.
Outcome: A roadmap for aligning Illinois's home visiting grants, which support 20,000 of the state's highest-need young children and their families.
CCA compared how the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) and the Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) handle 31 parts of grantmaking today, from planning and applications to funding decisions and reporting. This gave IDEC a clear understanding of the current state and proposed future state, a deeper analysis of priority recommendations, and a phased plan to reach a single funding stream approach.
Opportunity
Home visiting is one of the most powerful early childhood interventions. Illinois offers a free, voluntary program that pairs pregnant people and families with children from birth to age five with a trained home visitor who assesses family needs, coaches on parenting and child development, and connects families to community services. It reaches 20,000 of the state's highest-need children through roughly $180 million in funding, distributed through multiple, separately administered streams.
As of July 1, 2026, IDEC became operational, bringing preschool, child care, home visiting, and early intervention programs more efficient, equitable, and easier for families to navigate. To that end, IDEC leadership asked CCA to help them think through the alignment of Home Visiting processes.
Action
CCA mapped the current state of home visiting grantmaking and built a roadmap toward an aligned future state.
“Our goal is to put Illinois on a path to be the best state in the country to raise a family with young children. CCA is helping us get there by making home visiting easier to access for the families and providers who depend on it.”
September 2026: The Illinois Department of Early Childhood and the CCA Board and team met to discuss the partnership to reduce administrative burden on families and providers. Pictured L to R: Jennifer Steans, Ann Whalen, Teresa Ramos, Shontée Blankenship, Katie Jahnke Dale, Rebekah Scheinfeld, Veenu Verma.
Discover: CCA cross-walked the current state of 31 components of ISBE and IDHS home visiting grantmaking across four phases (planning, application, allocation, and accountability) and program requirements, documenting where each element is dictated by State legislation and/or federal rules.
Design: Working through priority components in client working sessions, CCA proposed future-state alignments grounded in four principles:
Move toward uniform processes unless there is a strong reason not to
Align to federal requirements where reasonable
Streamline to limit administrative burden
Connect to IDEC's broader initiatives such as cross-system data integration and workforce support.
Deliver: CCA delivered three assets: a workbook pairing current and proposed future states with the steps and tradeoffs to get there; deep-dive analyses of priority components; and a handoff deck laying out the opportunities, timeline, and next steps.
Impact
By reducing duplicative processes and administrative burden, the work would allow more of Illinois's home visiting investment reach the 20,000 highest-need children and families it is meant to serve. As IDEC stands up as Illinois's dedicated early childhood agency, it now has a blueprint to consolidate home visiting grantmaking step by step, incorporating stakeholder feedback, pursuing the legislative changes some alignments require. The blueprint will help IDEC move toward a single funding approach without disrupting services along the way.
IDEC came away with a clear, component-by-component picture of how its inherited home visiting grants work today, and a concrete plan to align them with a shared path towards implementation.
