Summary of Changes to ACF-700

ACF-700 Tribal Annual Report

Summary of Proposed Changes

On an annual basis, Tribal Lead Agencies for the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) are required to submit aggregate information on services provided. The Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act of 2014 reauthorized and re-envisioned the CCDF program. A final rule was published in 2016 that specified how the revised programmatic requirements applied to Tribes. To reflect regulatory changes (such as categorizing Tribal Lead Agencies by their funding allocation as small, medium, large) in the Tribal Annual Report, also known as the ACF-700, and to reduce the reporting burden to Tribal grantees, OCC is proposing the following changes to the form:

1. Incorporate an Introduction - Program Characteristics section to the ACF-700 form, which will capture whether the Tribal Lead Agency

1. supplemented the CCDF grant with dollars from other sources during the last fiscal year, and if so, identify the other sources of funding. These questions were previously included in Part 2–Tribal Narrative, but as they impact how the Office of Child Care (OCC) may conduct the analysis of the administrative data reported, the questions were moved to the Introduction: Program Characteristics section of the ACF-700;

2. is reporting all children served or just those children served with CCDF funds under Part 1-Administrative Data; and

3. for a Tribal Lead Agency with small allocations only, whether it supports quality initiatives and does not provide direct child care services, which exempts the Tribal Lead Agency from reporting Part 1-Administrative Data.

2. Reduce the reporting burden on Tribal Lead Agencies by removing some questions from Part 1 – Administrative Data, which reports data on children and families receiving CCDF-funded direct child care services, and on services that were provided. In particular, OCC is proposing to

1. For question #2, remove the distinction between licensed and non-licensed care types as with the regulatory changes Tribal Lead Agencies are exempt from establishing licensing requirements;

2. For questions #3-#7, remove reporting of data characteristics by care type; for example, age of children to be reported only by age category, and not by age category and care type;

3. remove reporting the number of children served by reason for care due to federal emergencies, and add two new reasons for care (i) both employment and training/education, and (ii) use of categorical eligibility, which means that the Tribe has been approved to use categorical eligibility because their Tribal Median Income is below the level established by the Secretary (currently 85% of State Median Income), and the Indian children in the Tribe’s service area would be considered eligible regardless of the family’s income, work, or training status; and

4. remove reporting the number of children served whose family income is categorized by the Federal Poverty Level.

3. Reduce the reporting burden on Tribal Lead Agencies by removing some questions from Part 2–Tribal Narrative, which describes general child care activities and actions in the Lead Agency’s reservation or Tribal service area. In particular, OCC is proposing to

1. Remove questions 2, 4, 5, 6, and 7, as these questions are included in the CCDF Tribal Plan; and

2. Move question # 3 to the Part 1 – Administrative Data.