The Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 requires federal agencies, like FNS, to give Congress information about payment errors for federal programs, like CACFP. FNS planned this study to estimate payment errors in CACFP child care centers. However, after completing the study, FNS found an error in the method used to estimate nationwide findings from the study data. Because of the error, FNS is not publishing the full study, and will instead present key findings that relate to broad trends instead of specific estimates.
We explored the feasibility of using existing data from state monitoring reviews – a process designed to assess operations and provide real-time technical assistance to family day care homes operating CACFP – to estimate the rate of improper payments in those operations. This study found that flexibility in these reviews and the information they report across states, while beneficial for their main purpose, made the resulting data unusable for estimating a national improper payment rate.
The purpose of this pilot was to test possible methods that could lead to valid estimations of the number of meals served by family day care homes. The estimated number of meals served can be used to develop estimates of over- and under-counts of meal claims that result in erroneous payments.
The Improper Payments Information Act of 2002 requires all federal agencies to calculate the amount of erroneous payments in federal programs and to periodically conduct detailed assessments of vulnerable program components. This is the third wave of a program assessment of the Family Day Care Home component of USDA's Child and Adult Care Food Program.
FNS proposed to select a random sample of sponsoring organizations and, from each, use a random selection of the sponsor’s monitoring visits of family day care homes. Using these data, FNS would compare the number of meals claimed with the number of children observed at the time of the visit.
The Improper Payments Information Act of 2002 requires all federal agencies to calculate the amount of erroneous payments in federal programs and to periodically conduct detailed assessments of vulnerable program components. This program assessment of the Family Day Care Home component of USDA's Child and Adult Care Food Program provides a national estimate of the share of CACFP family day care homes that are in the wrong reimbursement tier.