Office of Children and Family Services

Day Care Planning for Recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families

The Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) offers grants to encourage day care providers to start or expand day care programs, and provides more than $600 million a year in subsidies to help pay for the day care costs incurred by eligible low-income families, many of whom receive public assistance funded by the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) federal block grant. Since TANF recipients are generally required to participate in work or job training activities, they may need day care services for their children. If so, the services are to be arranged for by their local social services districts under the supervision of OCFS. We examined whether OCFS had developed a process for determining whether the number of day care slots in an area is likely to be sufficient to meet the needs of the TANF recipients in the area. We found that OCFS has developed a process for estimating the number of day care slots needed by TANF recipients in each local district, but has not developed a comparable process for estimating the number of day care slots likely to be available to the TANF children in each district. As a result, OCFS cannot determine if there are likely to be shortages of day care slots in any districts, and take actions to increase the number of slots in those districts. We recommended actions that could be taken by OCFS to help ensure that the day care needs of TANF recipients are adequately met.

For a complete copy of Report 2000-S-57 click here.
For a copy of the 90-day response click here.
For a copy of the associated follow-up report click here.