The Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) is a crucial program that helps low-income families afford child care, allowing them to work or attend training and education programs. As the third-largest federal block grant, CCDF allocated $5.4 billion in FY 2015 alone. Administered through a partnership between the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and individual states, CCDF provides subsidies to approximately 1.5 million children every month. Ensuring the integrity of such a significant program is paramount to guarantee funds are used effectively and reach the families who need them most.
To assess how states are managing CCDF program integrity, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) released a report in July 2016, titled More Effort is Needed to Protect the Integrity of the Child Care and Development Fund (OEI-03-16-00150). This report examined states’ program integrity activities in FY 2015, detailing the scope and outcomes of these efforts and evaluating the extent to which states implemented key anti-fraud measures. The findings highlight the importance of robust program integrity measures within CCDF to safeguard taxpayer dollars and support the program’s intended beneficiaries.
To complement the OIG report, an interactive map was created to visualize CCDF program characteristics across different states. This map provides state-specific data on program statistics and selected program integrity activities, offering a deeper understanding of how program integrity is addressed at the state level. Exploring this data can reveal insights into the varying approaches and challenges states face in maintaining CCDF program integrity.
The map categorizes states based on the amount of federal CCDF funding received in FY 2015, using a color-coded system:
| Funding Level | Color on Map |
|---|---|
| Less than $40 million | |
| $40 million to $100 million | |
| Greater than $100 million |
Footnotes:
¹ The national Payment Error Rate is a weighted average of states’ reported rates, not the median.
² Payment Error Rates are from states’ most recent reports, which may be from FY 2012, FY 2013, or FY 2014 due to a 3-year reporting cycle.
³ “Unknown” indicates the state answered “Do Not Know” to the OIG survey question.
⁴ “Not Reported” (NR) means the state did not answer the OIG survey question.
⁵ Some states provided total violation numbers but not breakdowns for intentional, unintentional, and administrative errors.
⁶ Iowa reported zero law enforcement referrals but noted direct fraud referrals to the Iowa Department of Inspections & Appeals.
