New Department of Early Childhood launches full operations
[July 02, 2026]
By Peter Hancock
SPRINGFIELD — As Illinois enters a new fiscal year Wednesday, a new
state agency is officially taking charge of a wide range of programs for
infants, toddlers and their families.
The Illinois Department of Early Childhood officially takes over
Wednesday as the agency in charge of programs ranging from in-home
visits for newborns and their mothers to licensing and regulating
childcare facilities and funding preschools.
“It’s incredibly exciting because it’s something that we haven’t done
before in Illinois,” IDEC Secretary Teresa Ramos said in an interview
Tuesday, on the eve of the agency’s full launch. “Other states have done
it and we have been really intentional about connecting and learning
from them.”
Gov. JB Pritzker called for creating the new agency in 2023 as a way of
streamlining those programs and making it easier for families to find
the services they need. At the time, programs were divided between the
Department of Human Services, the Illinois State Board of Education and
the Department of Children and Family Services.
Lawmakers followed up the next year with legislation formally
establishing the new agency. But the agency was given two years to hire
staff and get organized in preparation for the official transfer of
responsibilities.
Ramos, who previously served as first assistant deputy governor for
education in Pritzker’s office, was named the agency’s first permanent
secretary in December 2024.
During that time, lawmakers have also worked to update dozens of
statutes dealing with preschools and childcare facilities. On Friday,
June 26, Pritzker signed legislation that overhauls the childcare
licensing process and clarifying what types of providers are exempt from
licensing.
House Bill 3595 also updates some terminology, changing the term “day
care” wherever it appears in statutes to “early care and education,” and
replacing the word “facility” with “provider.”
“Because we’ve heard for a long time from providers that they care for
children and not days,” Ramos said.
Now, with a staff of more than 500 individuals and a budget of $4.4
billion — most of which is money that previously went to other agencies
— Ramos says the agency is open for business.
“The work to think through and bring coherence to early childhood
services for families and supports for providers has been years in the
making,” Ramos said. “And the last several years has been really working
to understand current program operations, to listen to parents and
providers about what is and isn’t working so that way we can really lead
with ensuring that we have a simpler, better, fairer system for them.”
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Teresa Ramos, secretary of the Illinois Department of Early
Childhood testifies before a House committee in March 2025. (Capitol
News Illinois illustration, images provided)
New functions
Among the functions the new agency administers starting Wednesday are
licensing and regulating childcare facilities as well as preschools and
other early childhood education programs. The agency’s budget for the
new fiscal year includes a $55 million increase for the Child Care
Assistance Program which subsidizes the cost of childcare for low-income
families.
Those are the kinds of services, Ramos said, that are critical to many
working families because they make it possible for parents to earn a
living to provide for their children.
“Early childhood education is so important on so many broad levels,” she
said. “Ninety percent of brain development happens before the age of
five, and the early childhood workforce supports all the other
workforces, allowing parents to go and families to go to work, ensuring
that they’re cared for by a trained workforce.”
As the new agency was getting off the ground, some lawmakers expressed
hope that consolidating multiple programs under one roof would result in
administrative savings and that the total budget of the new agency would
be less than what the state had been spending before.
But Ramos said IDEC’s current focus is on completing a smooth transition
of programs to the new agency and trying to prevent any disruption of
services.
“The goal of the new agency is really to deliver effective services for
the families with young children who want them across the rich racial,
regional, cultural, and linguistic diversity of the state,” she said,
“And that’s how we’re going to really track our success over time.”
Capitol News Illinois is
a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government
coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily
by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick
Foundation.
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