LDE Improves Oversight of Child Care Assistance Program; Some Additional Changes Recommended

Auditors evaluated whether the Louisiana Department of Education (LDE) addressed issues identified in an April 2012 performance audit of the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP). That audit looked at the processes the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) used to prevent, detect, and recover improper CCAP payments and identified $46,000 that may have been improperly spent. On July 1, 2015, CCAP was transferred to LDE’s control.

The current audit found LDE had fully implemented nine of the 10 original report recommendations and partially implemented one, which reduced the amount of potentially improper payments identified by auditors to approximately $24,000. Auditors also noted two areas where LDE could improve its use of data to strengthen the Department’s oversight of CCAP.

In the first area, LDE has established procedures in the eligibility process to prevent child care providers from being authorized as household designees, as required by Department policy. Such a designation allows a person to scan children in and out of care on behalf of their parents. However, those procedures require staff to review each case file to determine whether the policy is being violated.

Electronically collecting household designee information, including addresses, would allow LDE to more efficiently verify that only appropriate individuals are authorized to scan children in and out of care. LDE officials said the agency is working on a new data system that will have this capability.

In the second area, auditors said the Department’s current system to flag excessive back scanning of children’s attendance also would benefit from a more automated process because it would be less resource intensive and strengthen oversight. Back scanning is the practice of retroactively scanning a child into the child care facility whether the child is actually attending or not and occurs for various reasons. Right now, LDE staff review a sample of cases listed in monthly excessive back scanning reports, but the manual process only allows them to identify and investigate a small percentage of cases.