Helping parents, caregivers, child care providers, and educators increase their capacity to facilitate the development of cognitive, language comprehension, expressive language, social-emotional, and motor skills, and promote learning readiness.

Promoting effective parenting.

Enhancing early childhood literacy.

Developing linkages among early learning programs within a community and between early learning programs and health care services for young children.

Increasing access to early learning opportunities for young children with special needs, including developmental delays, by facilitating coordination with other programs serving such young children.

Increasing access to existing early learning programs by expanding the days or times that the young children are served, by expanding the number of young children served, or by improving the affordability of the programs for low-income families.

Improving the quality of early learning programs through professional development and training activities, increased compensation, and recruitment and retention incentives, for early learning providers.

Removing ancillary barriers to early learning, including transportation difficulties and absence of programs during nontraditional work times.

that Local Councils described in section 9413 of this title work with local educational agencies to identify cognitive, social, emotional, and motor developmental abilities which are necessary to support children’s readiness for school;

that the programs, services, and activities assisted under this chapter will represent developmentally appropriate steps toward the acquisition of those abilities; and

that the programs, services, and activities assisted under this chapter collectively provide benefits for children cared for in their own homes as well as children placed in the care of others.