Child Care: Additional Information Is Needed on Working Families Receiving Subsidies Page: 4 of 46
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* the extent to which states have changed policies since 2001 that could
affect access to child care assistance programs and the amounts of
subsidies provided to families; and
* the number of children and families receiving child care assistance from
CCDF and TANF funds.
To address our first and second objectives, we surveyed child care
administrators in 50 states and the District of Columbia on their respective
state's child care assistance policies. The survey asked them whether their
states had made changes to key policies that could affect access to child
care assistance programs and subsidy amounts since March 2003. All 50
states and the District of Columbia responded to our survey between
March 11 and March 31, 2005. We compared these responses with
responses to a previous survey we conducted in March and April 2003
covering policies and practices from 2001 through 2003. We combined the
results from the two surveys to provide a 4-year assessment of changes
between January 2001 and March 2005. Our analyses of state policy
changes are limited to the information that states reported in our surveys
about the direction of change (e.g., increasing or decreasing income
eligibility and co-payments), if any. To gather information on the number
of children and families receiving child care assistance from CCDF and
TANF funds, we reviewed the Department of Health and Human Services'
(HHS) data on number of children served through CCDF and held
discussions with HHS officials about the availability of data on the number
of children and families served through TANF. In addition, we held
discussions with HHS officials on the collection and maintenance of
available data and determined they were sufficiently reliable for the
purposes of this report. Furthermore, we interviewed officials in five
states-Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Oregon and Wyoming-to
gain a more in-depth perspective on child care policy changes in their
states. We conducted this review from February 2005 through May 2005 in
accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.
On May 25, 2005, we briefed your staff on the results of our review. This
report formally conveys the information provided during that briefing.
(See app. I for the briefing slides.) In summary, we found the following:
All states make TANF, transitioning families, and other low-income
families eligible for assistance. However, some states set additional
criteria that may limit the extent of service to transitional and, especially,
to other low-income families. Thirty-one states-an increase of six states
since our previous report-reported that, using their state's eligibilityGAO-05-667 Additional Information Is Needed on Working Families
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United States. Government Accountability Office. Child Care: Additional Information Is Needed on Working Families Receiving Subsidies, report, June 29, 2005; Washington D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc300909/m1/4/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.