The Department of Children and Families just released an operations memo dated 8/11/11 on the subject “Authorizations to Licensed Family Providers to be Attendance Based Only”. “Attendance Based” means payment is based solely on hours attended, unlike private child care, Head Start, and public and choice schools, where everything is enrollment based–i.e. payment is for a slot. Under their new authority granted by the 2011-13 Budget, DCF has decided to implement this cost cutting (or cost shifting) measure that amounts to a substantial financial hit to family child care providers who are part of Wisconsin Shares. This comes on top of inadequate reimbursement rates that remain frozen at 2005 levels and have already negatively impacted the quality and availability of care for Wisconsin’s low-income working families.

There are several problems with this policy change:

• Attendance based only payments unfairly punish family providers who care for Shares children with an immediate 7-8% compensation cut (based on average attendance figures).
• In licensed child care, payments should mirror the market, where payments are made based on child enrollment, not on hours attended.
• If the payment system does not provide fair, reasonable reimbursement to providers, many providers will choose not to serve low-income families.
• DCF is exercising their authority unilaterally, with no input from legislators, consumers, providers, or experts in the field.
• It is extremely unfair to only apply this policy to family providers (this is bad public policy for ALL providers).
• The WI Shares program is actually UNDER budget, so there should be no immediate need for cost saving measures.

Daithi Wolfe