Office of Children and Family Services

New York City Administration for Children's Services

New York City Human Resources Administration

Health, Safety and Fiscal Issues Relating to Legally-Exempt Child Care in New York City (Follow-Up Report)

Child care providers in New York State are licensed, registered and regulated under the supervision of the Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS). Under the New York State Child Care Block Grant subsidy program, child care providers that are legally-exempt from certain OCFS requirements are paid for child care services provided to children of eligible families. Two agencies jointly operate this program in New York City: the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) and the Human Resources Administration (HRA).

In audit 2007-N-11, we examined whether oversight activities by OCFS, ACS and HRA were effective in monitoring the health and safety of children receiving care from legally-exempt providers in New York City and if program funds were spent for their intended purposes. We found that a number of improvements were needed in the oversight that was provided by the three agencies, as 94 percent of our random sample of 50 providers had one or more issues of noncompliance with health and safety requirements, we could not confirm that child care services were actually being provided by 14 of the 50 providers, and two of the providers were registered on the New York State Sex Offender Registry. We recommended that certain improvements be made, and when we followed up on these matters with agency officials, we found that progress had been made in the agencies’ implementation of our audit recommendations.

For a complete copy of Report 2009-F-18 click here.
For a copy of the 30-day response click here.