Good morning, everyone.
Thank you so much for taking the
time to meet with us today.
I'm just going to give it another
minute or so just in case we have a
few stragglers and then we will go
ahead and get started.
All right, good morning.
My name is Gina Page.
I'm DCF's communications director.
I've obviously emailed with all of
you over
the last 48 hours or
so. We really appreciate you taking
the time to be here with us today.
We're going to have two presenters.
This presentation is not going to be
recorded, but we will be providing
you with the slides afterwards.
I do want to just talk a little bit
about attribution.
So the presentation portion, which
is going to about the first 20-ish
minutes or so, is on
background. So please no direct
quotes. There will be an
availability at the end where we
will have an opportunity for folks
to ask questions.
Those can be direct quotes, and
once we switch that
availability, I'll talk a bit about
how we're going to do that in this
virtual environment.
But I am going to,
give me one second, I may go back
because I'm just admitting one more
individual into the
room and just wanna make sure that
they are able to
see the attribution information.
We have two wonderful speakers here
today.
The first is our
D.C.F.
Secretary, Jeff Pertle, and then
Priya Bhatia, who is our
administrator for the Division of
Early Care and Education.
And I'm going to kick it over
to them
to begin today's
press briefing.
Good morning everybody, thank you
for joining us and
being with us here this morning.
Apologize for not being available
yesterday as many families
are navigating all the various
illnesses going around.
Perfect time to be talking about
families in childcare.
Wanted to share some of this
information with folks.
We're gonna be doing this also with
the legislature tomorrow.
As we've gotten a lot of questions,
both from folks in the media, but
policymakers and the public in
light of some of the issues that are
going on in Minnesota particularly
around accusations of fraud in
child care.
People want to know how does
Wisconsin system work?
What have we done to tackle some of
these issues?
Some folks have been around long
enough that they'll remember the
issues and sort of scandals back in
2009 around
fraud in childcare in Wisconsin and
some of the reforms that were made
that primarily led to a stronger
more resilient system that we have
today that I you're
going to hear a little bit about
today. I'm going to talk about the
system overview and a little bit of
what the landscape looks like for
child care.
Here, we'll share a little about how
the Wisconsin Shares program
operates, and then I'll talk a
little bit about program integrity,
and she'll close us out with sort
of the accountability part, the
federal and state monitoring, how
does all this work, and we can
do everybody's questions.
Okay, so an overview
of the Wisconsin child care
system.
I think the first thing to sort of
ground us in as we look at how
does this work is just a reminder
that right now we're talking about
regulated child care
and that means that we're generally
talking about providers that
are serving four or more
unrelated kids who
are under the age of seven outside
the home for compensation.
That is what sort of triggers the
requirement around regulated
child care.
So there are unregulated kinds
of care. You can have babysitting,
you can do friend, family, and
neighbor care. The neighbor can take
care of one kid, that's allowed.
That is not illegal, it is
unregulating.
These types in primary view are the
regulated part of the system.
There's about 4,800 folks,
providers in the state of Wisconsin,
providing care for kids, about
180,000 kids give or take
in that system.
And then there are different types,
certified, generally a survey.
Smaller families, that's where you
can serve under four kids and
still get access to shares in some
of the programs.
It's a family-based setting.
Summer camps and after school,
licensed family and group, that is
typically what we're talking about
when we talk about child care.
And then schools also have the
ability to run child
care as well under their own set of
rules. But what I want to break down
when we look at this next slide is
sort of a sense of how does that
universe look in about.
47% of all
providers are going to be
group centers,
about 47% are going be family
providers, either those licensed
family or certified providers.
And then everybody else is either in
that camp after school,
public school lane, okay?
So it's about 50-50 between group
and family.
But when we look at kids,
82% of the kids are
in group centers, only 9%
are in a family care setting.
And that's just economies of
scale. So centers can be big,
there's ratios, you have to have a
certain amount of staffing, but a
center can be as big as you can
manage, as long as you have the
appropriate staffing for it.
A family provider is historically
capped in eight kids at
most, most are serving less than
that. The last budget did
change that, that they'll be able to
go up to 12 with a second adult,
but these are implicitly smaller
providers.
So there's a lot of them serving a
small number of kids in each
provider, and then the centers are
operating at scale at a much larger
capacity. So when we sort of think
about the universe, that's the
texture and landscape for what the
breakdown looks like.
So when we think about how this
system works, there's a couple
of different things when we thinking
about integrity in the
system. There's the front end.
What are the regulations
that are required and initial
licensure requirements for a
provider to get into being able to
provide care?
What is the ongoing monitoring
and licensing that happens to ensure
that kids are safe?
And then what are the progressive
enforcement pieces that happen
either due to health and safety or
financially if a provider is not
doing something correct.
And what are the recovery pieces
and terminations and
sort of final actions that can
happen if there is in fact something
financial or health and safety that
isn't appropriate.
So there's sort of a spectrum of
things.
So the key pieces on regulation
here, age and background,
there is a set of background checks
in minimum ages folks have to meet.
There's training requirements, both
for staff and providers on
range of both sort
of developmental topics, everything
from shaking baby to sort of.
Curriculum and instruction pieces,
how do you help coach kids
and move them through the system,
all the way through to
the sort of financial monitoring and
program integrity pieces that we do
and some of that will depend on the
staff person's role.
Are they the provider
who's responsible for the
financial well-being of the
center or are they frontline staff
in those will vary in training, will
vary depending on that.
I've brought it up to submit an
application.
There's a set of policies that they
have to have, building plans,
insurance, and fees.
Folks have questions about that,
most of it's in the regs and we can
help you find kind of how that
works. There are inspections.
So there are different components to
this. It's got to pass building code
and health and safety.
So some of those are DCF,
so health and safety requirements
for child care.
There's also building code run
by county and overseen by
dispatch, the Department of Safety
and Professional Services,
regulations around physical safety,
and what is required at a building.
So you've got different components
overlaying there.
And then health requirements,
proof of vaccinations, particularly
for animals, they're going to be in
the home while child care is being
provided. So there's a set of
different things that you've got to
go through and some of it will vary
between a home setting and
a center based setting.
So once you go through that initial
process, there's a pre-licensing
piece that you'll go through.
There's technical assistance that's
available for folks.
They'll submit that final
application and they're approved.
They can open, provide care
for kids and enroll them.
And then there's ongoing licensing
pieces. So we perform unannounced
visits, at least annually, sometimes
multiple times a year.
Where we can review documentation
and determine compliance.
So we're looking at things like
staffing levels, are the files,
qualifications, background checks,
are the trainings done, are the
people who are there say that
they're there, and is that correct?
Are the program activities
happening?
So supervision ratios, emergency
plans, curriculum
and instruction that's happening,
health and safety, so that's
everything from immunizations to
sanitation, medication
distribution, and administration,
all those pieces.
Building code checks, fire safety
equipment, all the physical
environment pieces, as
well as the operational stuff.
So, you know, checking to see that
the policies are there or the
appropriate things posted,
parents aware of the appropriate
thing, enrollment and attendance,
transportation, all these pieces are
gonna get checked when they go
through a licensing visit.
There's a sort of a checklist that
the licensure has to go through and
determine whether they're in
compliance, meeting or not meeting,
or whether it doesn't apply each of
the elements according to the rules
and regulations.
So when something isn't
correct, and again, that can be a
health and safety piece, it can be a
piece on program, it could be a
financial piece that might get
referred to the program integrity
side, but there's an initial
violation that the licensing
specialist can issue.
It's like a non-compliance
statement.
Violations are common.
Not every violation is a serious
one. There are sometimes things that
we're providing technical assistance
about or notification that they got
to get into compliance with
something.
A corrective action plan the
provider would submit and there
might be monitor.
So they're saying, oh, there wasn't
a cap on all of the
electrical outlets because one of
the kids removed them.
We didn't check that.
So here's our plan for making sure
that next time you come by that
that's all gonna be squared away.
On more serious issues, things
will begin to escalate.
So we can issue orders
and corrections for fines
if there's some sort of major
violation.
We can withhold subsidy and
payments to ensure that
either we are recouping money that
was paid that shouldn't have been
paid, so they were claiming kid that
wasn't there.
Sometimes that's administrative
error, that doesn't necessarily mean
it's fraud.
Sometimes there's just paperwork
that isn't right, but
we can do those financial
corrections.
We can take licensing actions, so we
can deny a new provider, we can
suspend folks, We can revoke their
license and
go through that process.
There are times where we issue an
immediate closure.
There's an eminent threat to health
and safety.
And that's usually a pretty
significant item.
So it says
a little bit there, no heat, ongoing
abuse, something specific that's
going to lead to that kind of an
action.
Generally, the seriousness, the
extent to the prior history.
Cooperation is a big factor.
A lot of these things come to us
because providers will notify
us that there's a problem,
a staff member did something wrong,
that they discovered something and
they will report that to us.
So there is a cooperative
relationship here that happens where
providers are sharing information
with us. It may result in a
violation and be a result of a
non-compliance in a corrective
action plan.
But you know there's going to be a
lot of small things going on and
then there's going to a handful of
really big and significant issues
that are going to sort of move up
and be triaged into the high-risk
category.
Okay, so Priya's gonna talk a little
bit about the actual SHARES program.
So just as a precursor to this,
and she'll talk a bit about this,
but not everyone is in SHAREs,
so there's regulation for all
regulated childcare.
SHARes is a funding program for
some of the kids who are eligible
within the childcare universe.
And that's really been the focus of
the stuff that's going on, and I
think what Priya is gonna talk about
now. You
Thanks, Jeff.
So Wisconsin Shares is
our child care subsidy
program. It is designed
to assist low income families
with the cost of
child care.
And it is federally funded.
It's funded primarily by
the TANF Black Grant, so
temporary assistance for needy
families.
And by CCDF
which is the Child Care Development
Fund. So these are block grants
that the federal government gives
to states to
run child care subsidy programs.
In Wisconsin, parents must be
participating in an approved
activity in order to receive
Wisconsin shares.
That's most typically Um,
employment, um,
And you can see here, it can also
be participation in W-2
or F-set program.
Those are job training programs, the
food, share, employment, and
training program.
Parents can also, be engaged in
education.
And there is an allowance for
activity breaks.
So for example, if a parent loses
their job, their Wisconsin
shares subsidy is
not automatically terminated.
But instead they have a set
amount of time to find new
employment and they can continue
Wisconsin shares during
that activity break period.
If it's a two parent household,
both parents have to be engaged
in approved activities.
So going back to the last slide,
in addition to an approved activity,
there are financial requirements.
Specifically, there's an eligibility
threshold.
In order to enter the program,
the family must be
at or below 200%
of the federal poverty level.
So for a
family of three, for example, that's
about $53,000,
family of four, about $64,300.
And just a note,
when we say parent, that is
inclusive of foster parents,
kinship parents.
In other situations where
another individual, besides
the biological parent, is acting
to care for the child.
So that's just a brief overview of
the Wisconsin Shares program,
and I'm gonna turn it back to
Jeff.
Okay, on
program integrity and in particular
sort of how do we get to
where we are. I talked a little bit
about the different phases of
the system.
I would say in
2009 there's a significant
change that's going to happen in
this system.
Raquel Rutledge's pieces on
cashing in on kids will win the
Pulitzer Prize and really
triggers a nationwide conversation
about child care.
In program integrity you
see links here at all the different
pieces that are there and there's
some highlights Where they talk
about some of the kinds of
things that folks discover we're
going on in the system focused
jobs sort of ridiculous
approvals for job and work
activities agents
being slowed to act and regulators
not revoking licenses a
lot of Flexibility or too
much flexibility and kind of
fraudulent businesses.
I would say swapping
kids back and forth between family
providers and a bunch of
different things.
And this really triggers a
whole set of reforms and responses
about how Wisconsin's
system works.
And there's a couple areas we really
focus in on.
Billing for unprovided care, so
fraudulent billing, falsification
of records,
cash checking operations was a big
thing that was going on at the time.
We don't really see that anymore.
Uh the recruiting of fake employees
and so making sure the sort of
integrity of staffing Is
there there was a 2009 so
special review that the legislative
audit bureau did at the time
And they estimated somewhere
between I would say I mean
you can see it there but uh 17
to 20 to 24
million based on a difference
between improper subsidy payments
and um
fraudulent reporting on kid
enrollment.
And so we're going to talk a little
bit about how the audits work now
both federally and state that
sort of navigate through these
pieces.
But what we saw in Wisconsin, and I
think you'll see similar things
start to happen in some of these
other states, and so we are
a little of an outlier.
Some of these things have also
become reflected in subsequent
federal and state laws in other
places, but whistleblower
protections for employees was
added.
Program integrity staff was
bolstered of a whole unit was
created to ensure that there is sort
of review, particularly at the
financial aspects of childcare in
Wisconsin.
Attendance tracking was enhanced and
added so our listeners can look at
and our program integrity people can
review actual attendance records
and not just enrollment.
We look at both pieces at
different points in time.
Fingerprinted background checks was
the thing we started before we
became a national requirement.
They expanded the bar crimes list
so they added a lot of financial
crimes to this
requirement that would prohibit you
from being able to run a child care
center or open an in-home family
care center.
Kid stat sort of based on the
stat pieces of the time was
a piece that was created and we
still continue to use today actually
all our human services programs to
review different data metrics
and program integrity to really look
at how are different programs
run and ensure that
they also have meeting needs,
that they have high program
integrity, and that they're
effective.
YoungSTAR was born out of this
conversation. It is the state's
quality rating information
system.
That is a national thing.
There are lots of other states that
do that. Youngster in particular was
designed in response to some of the
things that folks saw happening
during that 2009,
in the wake of the 2009 scandal.
And then we will be one of the
states that moves over into an
EBT card for childcare payments.
This is common in SNAP and other
programs. It's required in certain
other federal programs now.
It is optional in certain other
benefit programs and we are one of
the states that that do.
There. One of the arguments in favor
of the EBT card is that it sort of
bifurcates the relationship between
the provider payments and the pair
of payments and adds a layer of
protection from
the ability to sort of do fraudulent
or collusive activities.
It creates a separate monitoring
structure and a separate financial
structure there.
Those things are helpful, and I
think significantly reduce some
of the program integrity issues that
folks see going on in other places
and certainly that were going on at
the time.
The state also passed a number of
laws that made providers
more personally liable
so that they couldn't just close
their in-home business and
be done with it if they had
outstanding debts or liabilities.
And they also, again,
looked at and expanded some of the
statutory pieces around crimes
carrying for children, allowing
us to suspend and revoke licenses,
to limit subsidy payments for a
wider array of things.
So a whole bunch of things happened,
some of it's administrative, some
it's statutory, some of its
operationally and programmatic in
terms of its different components.
But we run a pretty
different operationally
different system today.
Than we did in 2009.
And again, I think those are
differences you see between what's
happening in
So one of the questions we get is,
OK, so when something happens and
someone refers a complaint,
how does this work?
So there's a couple of different
ways a complaint is going to come in
and trigger an investigation.
A licensure is going find something
when they're doing their unannounced
visit.
There is a hotline, there is a phone
number, there's website, there was
an email box that DCF operates,
DHS also operates their
own. And if someone refers
sort of cross programmatically, we
refer them to the other agency.
If a concern comes
in about fraud,
or there can be things, what we
call red flags in the system.
So there are data parameters
within our payments and
enrollment systems that look at
wild swings in
payments, changes in enrollment,
when people are claiming dollars
that exceed the number of kids that
they have enrolled, where the system
itself can generate a flag It
says this doesn't look right.
It needs to go for a review
and when all of those pieces
come in they show up with our
staff and they go through a desk
review and anything that from a
bread flyer review anything that's
a serious concern for health and
safety anything that looks like
fraud or collusion those things
immediately go into our high risk
category you're prioritized for
review so referral gets created
case gets assigned they
go through and determines which
we have a high medium and
low risk category and then
we manage every month.
Sort of how many cases are coming
in, how many have reclosed,
and where are we at in progressing
those investigations.
We have a team of auditors and
investigators who will then go in
and do a review of the
provider history, the shares
information, whatever the
universe is, the enrollment records
and those pieces.
They'll generate a communication
that ultimately determines all their
findings, meet with the provider
and then close the case.
And then there might be a series of
outcomes from that. It might be a...
Payment discrepancy that gets
resolved.
It might be an accounting error and
there is a payment owed back to us.
That is not necessarily fraud,
but it is an overpayment.
It needs to be collected and
corrected and it can either pay us
back or we can take that out of
subsequent future payments to make
that whole.
If they are unwilling to pay it, we
have to take a serious action.
You know, we can take them to court,
we could put them in collections and
ultimately taxes
and intercepts can be issued to
collect future money that's owed to
the state, if necessary.
And if there is financial issues
become significant enough, it can
impact the eligibility for shares,
they can be removed from the shows
program or ultimately closed.
So there's a whole range of
activities that can happen there.
And I'm going to pass it back to
Priya to talk a little bit about that's
like at the provider level and
then the feds in the state sort of
do monitoring of how the whole
system works I'm crazy to talk about
that.
So as Jeff said, there
is federal and state monitoring
of how we run the child care
subsidy system and
our health and safety monitoring
here at the state.
So the state performs
multiple assessments.
The big one is the
Legislative Audit Bureau performs
regular financial audits
every three years, including
of the Wisconsin shares.
Program, but of CCDF.
And then, as we just
talked about, at the individual
level, a state licensor
goes out and performs at least
one unannounced visit every
year.
It is not unusual for there to be
more than one, depending
on the
program's history.
And then
federal requirements,
the federal government performs
triennial monitoring visit.
So on different cycles, they
have first a CCDF
monitoring visit where they review
all the federal CCD
F requirements, including health
and safety and program integrity
and do
a visit and monitor how
we are implementing the rules.
And then every three years on
a different cycle.
Then the overall CCDF
monitoring, there is a federal
improper payment report.
So the last time we had that was in
2023, and
it will happen again later.
This year is our expectation,
it is every three years.
You can see here the
history that we've had with federal
improper payments.
We have made great strides
since the days that Secretary
Pertle was talking about earlier in
the wake of the fraud stories
and the
federal government requires that
our error rate be below
10%.
We take pride in the fact that we
are well below that at
2.9%, the
last time we had
a federal improper payment
monitoring.
In fact, I would say that the Office
of Child Care, the Federal Office of
child care, often asks us
to meet with other states
to provide some peer-to-peer support
for other states that are dealing
with challenges or questions
around program integrity.
So that's just a quick summary of
the state audits
and federal monitoring that
Wisconsin is subject to in the
childcare space.
There are a range of resources in
the back on Wisconsin shares,
program integrity.
There's a third one,
regulation, when we send out the
slides that folks have access to.
Gina, do you want any questions?
Yeah, so for those who, I know we
had a couple folks join a little
late, just a friendly
reminder that the presentation was
on background only, so
no direct quotes.
We are now transitioning into the
availability portion.
So these are direct quotes,
given we have a number of folks on
here, what we're gonna do is if you
can type your questions
into the chat, they
will come to the host and co-host
and we will take them as they come
in. We have a couple
minutes, about five-ish
or so.
So feel free to toss those in and we
will do our best.
And then if we are unable to get to
your question and you still have
questions.
Please feel free to
respond to the email once we send
those slides out which I will send
right after this.
I'm sure folks are typing, but I
will read them out as soon as we.
Are receiving.
Gina, I can see a bunch of questions
in the meeting chat, but I don't
know if you can see them.
I did see one come in.
I can see a whole list of them,
so...
We're going to have you do it then.
I'm just gonna manage
this. The only problem being I can't
scroll up and down.
Looks like they're coming through as
direct messages.
So there were a couple questions
about
some of the politics of this and
then some on the program
side of these pieces.
So on the operational side,
there was a question about how does
federal funding flow?
Does the federal funds go to the
parents? Does any money go to
provider?
Priya can give a little bit more
detail on this, but in general,
Wisconsin Shares is
a subsidy program that is paid
to the parents on an EBT
card that they use to
then pay their provider
for their service.
And that is the lion's share of
the childcare federal funding that
we run on a regular basis.
There are some programs
on the quality side that we
set aside some of the funding.
To pay for the pre-licensing
services in
some other areas.
Priya, maybe you want to speak a
little bit to that, but the lion's
share of the money goes in the
direct services side to
parents on an UBT card.
That's correct.
At least 70%
of the funding, pardon
me, at least
70 percent of the funding
must go to
the
subsidy program.
And so the vast majority
of CCDF funding goes
to Wisconsin Shares Subsidy
on EBT cards
and then parents pay providers
directly.
There is some funding that goes
towards workforce supports
to enhance the quality of
programs and to
support them with training and
technical assistance.
So I've got a couple of questions.
Sorry, go ahead.
I was gonna say I have some
questions as well.
Just give me a second.
Let me finish up a couple here real
quick.
Okay, so one of the questions was
about how many of the kids are in
Wisconsin shares.
And I just wanna be clear about
this. There's about 4,800
providers in
the state.
There's roughly a little less than
180,000 kids in
childcare in the State.
And so those are a little different.
At any given point in time,
20 to 22% of the kids
are on Wisconsin shares
in the state. So about a fifth of
the kid are on subsidy.
Everybody else is private pay.
There are more people eligible
for subsidy than use it.
That is common across the country.
That is sort of a national
phenomenon that folks
see and I think we continue
to try and get more people to
utilize the program.
And also a question about whether we
are confident about
Wisconsin not being at the risk of
losing federal funding and
you know let me say two things about
that. One very clearly we've already
made the January child care
payments.
Cards are loaded and people are
using them.
Folks should have confidence in the
system. I don't think we have any
concerns about being able to make
the February payments and other
payments moving forward.
There are, you know, some additional
guidance, I think, that we're likely
to see in maybe reporting
requirements, but our system is
well positioned to be able to meet
those and continue to move forward.
It may be administratively
burdensome, it may be more paperwork
and things we gotta collect, but
we're confident that our system,
I think particularly because of its
unique history, is probably
one of the best positioned in the
country for being able to navigate
some of the questions that are
coming in.
Gina, if you're getting some questions,
why don't we take yours?
Otherwise, I've got a few more here.
Yeah, so, um,
and Priya, this one may be a little
bit more geared towards you.
So providers charge for days that
the child does not attend.
How does that factor into charging
for no services?
You're on mute, Priya.
Can you read the question one more
time?
Yeah, so providers charge for days
that the child does not
attend. How does that factor into
charging for no services?
So it is true that
providers often do charge
for days that
a child does not
attend.
For example, children often get
sick and miss a day of
child care.
And so that is
permissible.
A parent receives a
subsidy based
on the need
that they have for child care.
And pays the child care provider
according to the contract that
the parent and the provider have.
So the parent and provider are
required to have a contract that
outline the terms of
payment agreements, absences.
And so parents are
paying the provider according to
those agreements.
And so it is permissible
for Wisconsin shares to be
used according to those
set procedures that
providers have.
Jeff, is there anything you wanna
add there?
My recollection is there's actually
either a state law or rule about
not being able to penalize
providers for when kids are sick
or missing days.
And I think that's pretty common
and pretty standard.
I think the way the question is
driving is how do you know when it's
fraud? How do you know when a kid
just stopped showing up?
And I think when we did the
licensing visit or get a tip or
we're checking the enrollment and
attendance records, if there's
discrepancies between the, you
talked about those policies, Paige
has talked about that.
How many approved days
can you be absent and there's a
limit on that.
And if the kids absent
more than that and we're paying for
it, that's going to trigger a
review. It might trigger a clawback
and recovery of money and it's going
to go into that program integrity
investigation.
And if it's two days,
it might just be a small recovery.
And if all of a sudden the kid's
been gone for a month and you're
probably clawing back all of the
shares authorization in that space.
And that's what the system's
designed to.
And if the child has not attended
for a month, both the parent and
provider are required to
notify their county
childcare worker
that issued the subsidy
so that appropriate action can be
taken.
You know, one of the questions that
folks have, you know,
I think Scott, you asked,
you know does this matter if
the president decides to target
Wisconsin for political reasons?
Let me say this, I think what
you see in Wisconsin in the wake of
the 2009, you know,
fraud scandal was a
bipartisan response to
program integrity, to making sure
that the subsidies for childcare
were gonna be paid and used
responsibly.
You have Republicans and Democrats
working together, passing laws
and bills across administrations.
It was the end of the Doyle
administration put in a lot of these
reforms, it was Governor Walker's
administration that moved us to the
EBT cards, you know, we've
continued that and I think as we've
seen these conversations around
what's been happening on the
federal funding side, not just
recently out of Minnesota, but in
the whole last year,
what we've seen is a politicization
of these, of these issues,
there are certainly some very
significant issues going on in
Minnesota.
There is no question that the
president politicizes this for an
agenda and targets folks for
it.
I think what you've seen the
governor say and what you see
Wisconsin leaders doing is showing
that we have a strong system that
has navigated these issues,
that has high integrity, that
addresses these things when they
come. And so we're confident about
our ability to continue to run a
robust and great childcare
system.
You know, I think the speaker
referred to having been here through
this experience and helped pass some
of these laws and you see the
governor committed to doing that
we're committed to doing that.
But nothing can stop the president
from politicizing an issue and I
think we all see that playing out in
a variety of ways all across the
country right now.
Anything that concerns us.
Jeff, I see a couple of questions
around improper payments when
they're discovered and kind of the
system
to recoup those.
So you might need to talk a
little bit about this, but when we
discover an improper payment, it's
gonna trigger that, and we'll send
these out to you, but that process
that we showed you, that process
graph for review,
they're gonna go through the
documentation, and improper payments
happen.
There is a difference between
improper payments and
fraud. I guess I wanna draw a
distinction there.
This is a transactional business
system, so we're sometimes checking
and auditing the records.
Did you get paid the right amount?
Was everything billed correctly?
You know, and there are going to be
transactional things that happen in
that that get squared up
throughout the course of the year.
I just got a letter from my health
insurance provider that my
dental provider
owes money back to them for my kids'
dental work, right?
Like those things get squared.
That's not necessarily fraud.
And if we
think that there's intentional and
fraudulent activity
There's also going to be penalties
and recruitments.
We're gonna recoup the money that is
an improper payment, a transactional
error. And if we think those
improper payments are fraudulent,
there could be legal and
prosecutorial actions as well.
So Prairie, you want to talk a
little bit about kind of anything
more you wanna add to those
distinctions and kind of how that
works?
Yeah, I think it depends
on the severity
of the improper payment.
Any patterns that we
are seeing in in that
particular parent or provider.
And so it can really our
responses can really range from
technical assistance all the
way to overpayments,
retrieving those funds to
termination of a program from
Wisconsin shares.
And No!
There is a range of
enforcement that does happen
depending on the severity
of the
improper payments that happened.
And again, generally, we can put
people on a payment plan to recoup
those funds.
That is common.
If we need to, we could take it out
of other payments, depending on what
kind of program that they're in
sometimes.
And then if necessary, if we have
a provider that we've had to
close or terminate from the share
system, and they owe money,
we can refer them to the Department
of Revenue for tax intercept to
recoupe and recover the money on an
ongoing basis. And we do do that.
Gina, you got other questions
popping through?
I do.
I think I have, we probably have
time for maybe two more.
We do have one
related
to a separate program, which I'll do
next.
But one is, can you briefly walk
through the page on the website that
lists the suspended child care
providers and the data that is
put on that site?
So this is related to the Wisconsin
Shares suspended terminated
providers.
We might need to look at that page.
Hold on one second.
Is there a specific question about
the page or do you just want to
understand what they're reading?
Just understand what they're
reading.
So the first number, so
there's a list of suspended
childcare providers.
This is required
that
we post suspended
programs.
We do that for programs.
We share information about programs
that are revoked for health and
safety reasons, as well as
programs that are suspended from
Wisconsin shares.
If you're just trying to understand
the headers here of the
providers, Each provider is given
a provider number, a license
number, that is the first number.
The 001 is the location
number. If you see a 002,
that means it's a provider that may
have had more than one location.
Then it has the name of
the provider,
the licensed,
the licensee, so
the name the individual
that holds the license for
the provider and then the
county where the provider resides.
And what I'm seeing underneath that
is the date that the provider
was suspended
and a list of
the reasons for
suspension, the different
violations.
And a no access visit, just
so everyone's clear on what that
means, that is when you do an
unannounced visit and we are unable
to gain egress to the
provider location.
Again, it is possible, particularly
for in-home providers that they're,
if somebody's on a field trip or
whatever, that there's a reason
that, you know, on the unannounce
visit, why people might not be
available. So that in and of
itself, the first time is not
always going to be conclusive of a
problem. But if there is a
no access visit, then we're gonna do
a repeat visit to
gain entry.
And that is usually, if we have more
than one no access visits, that
is gonna be pretty keen indicated
that there's a problem and they're
gonna get referred into the system.
If you're looking at the page that
Prairie was just walking through,
you can see the kinds of things we
just suspended this
provider.
For the very kinds of things we were
talking about, duplication of
records, outside employment.
These are all things that we were
able to investigate, verify, and
result in a suspension.
I don't know any of the details on
this particular one.
I didn't review it in advance, but I
think it illustrates actually how
the system works.
When it identifies that there's a
problem, we document that, it's
transparent, it's public, and
actually gets taken.
And then the last question that we
have time for is, has
there been any review of childcare
counts dollars?
Yes, so there are, Child Care
Accounts actually operates on a, I
would say, somewhat higher bar than
Shares does because it has proactive
auditing requirements that we put in
place for it.
So there were sampling audit
requirements put in.
There were reviews of all of our
federally funded programs during the
ARPA area.
We had some clawbacks of different
pieces that we
Priya, do you want to speak to them?
For child care counts,
we have consistently done a
sample of
a certain percentage of all
providers that received funding.
We randomly select them
and the auditors
review to make sure that
they were eligible for the funds and
that the information they entered
into their application was
correct. And that they used
the funds according to
the allowable uses.
And so again,
if we found any irregularities,
we can take similar
action as we've
taken shares where we issue an
overpayment.
And the provider can pay us back
with a lump sum or be put on a
payment plan.
And if we do not receive payment,
again, they can be referred over to
Department of Revenue for tax
intercept.
So some of the actions
we take are quite similar, but we
actually did a
proactive random sampling throughout
the life of the program.
We appreciate folks joining
us. We're going to do this again
with the Legislature tomorrow.
If you have additional questions,
feel free to reach out to
Gina. We are happy to walk people
through some of the pieces here.
And again, as the natural story
continues to unfold, if you
have questions or want to talk to
folks, let us know we're here to be
a resource in how the Wisconsin
system works.
Really appreciate your time this
morning. Thank you for joining us!
Bye, everybody.