To

References

Purpose

Background

Over the past several months the Administration on Children and Families (ACF) discovered that more than a dozen States and Territories did not report the correct pooling factor in FY 1999 and FY 2000. (See the description of "pooling factor" below.) Errors occurred either because the pooling factor was incorrect or was incorrectly applied to the ACF-801 report.

As a result, ACF revised the published FY 1999 administrative data and the soon-to-be published FY 2000 data from the ACF-800 and ACF-801 reports. The changes will require adjustments to documents on the ACF web site, the agency budget forecasts affecting the appropriations process, and general ACF/ACYF program administration

Guidance

For reporting purposes, the Child Care Bureau needs to know about the number of children and families served through the Child Care and Development Fund. The CCDF is comprised of the following: Discretionary Funds, Mandatory Funds, Matching Funds, State Share of Matching Funds, Maintenance of Effort (MOE) expenditures for allowable services or activities and funds transferred from Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) into the Discretionary Fund. Many lead agencies combine CCDF with non-CCDF monies to provide integrated services to low-income working families in their State. For CCDF reporting purposes, this is called "pooling".

To ease reporting requirements for these States and to encourage integrated approaches to subsidy administration, ACF has established a methodology for reporting that allows States to report on all children served when CCDF funds are combined with other monies to serve children. Examples of funds that States and Territories often include in their pool are: title XX funds, title IV-E funds for children in foster care, Welfare-to-Work (WtW) funds, non-compulsory education programs, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Child Care funds, State-only funds not used for MOE or Matching, or other funds not used for matching. If a State or Territorial Lead Agency pools non-CCDF funds with CCDF funds and includes cases served with other funding streams in its ACF-800 and ACF-801 reports, the answer should be "Yes" to element #17 on the ACF-800 report.

This same information may be obtained on the CCB web site under Grantee Reporting - On-line help for ACF-800 data elements at:

/programs/ccb/report/formhelp/acf800/helpdocs/context.htm

ACF issued Program Instruction ACYF-PI-CC-00-05 on November 9, 2000, to convey instructions to States and Territories for collecting annual State-level aggregate CCDF data (ACF-800). That Program Instruction can be found on the CCB web site under Policy and Funding - Archived Policy, Instructions, and Guidance at:

/programs/ccb/policy1/archives/pi0005/index.htm

ACF strongly encourages States and Territories to involve both fiscal and program staff when preparing the ACF-800 report. ACF also suggests that States and Territories consider a sign-off procedure requiring that State and Territorial Lead Agency Administrators provide final approval prior to submitting the ACF-800 report. Such procedures will assure greater reliability and reduce the need to revise child care data.

Further clarification regarding the ACF-800 reporting requirements is available from:
Child Care Bureau: Joseph Gagnier (202) 205-8455

Additional support and technical assistance may be obtained through the Child Care Automation Resource Center. The Resource Center has staff with information systems background who can answer questions and provide technical assistance in completing the ACF-800 and ACF-801 reports. The Resource Center can be reached toll-free at 1-877-249-9117 weekdays from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST).