Increase Flexibility for Tribes in Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Eligibility

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES <CFR>45 CFR Part 98</CFR> <RIN>RIN 0970-AD11</RIN> <SUBJECT>Increase Flexibility for Tribes in Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Eligibility</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of Child Care (OCC), Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families proposes to amend the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) regulations through this notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) to allow all Indian Tribes and Tribal Organizations operating CCDF programs, at their discretion, to establish and use eligibility criteria regardless of family income. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> In order to be considered, written comments on this proposed rule must be received on or before September 16, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments, identified by docket number ACF-2024-0010 and/or RIN number 0970-AD11, to the Federal eRulemaking Portal: <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the agency name and docket number or RIN number for this rulemaking. All comments received are a part of the public record and will be posted for public viewing on <E T="03">www.regulations.gov,</E> without change. That means all personal identifying information (such as name or address) will be publicly accessible. Please do not submit confidential information, or otherwise sensitive or protected information. We accept anonymous comments. If you wish to remain anonymous, enter “N/A” in the required fields. <E T="03">Docket:</E> Go to the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> for access to the rulemaking docket, including any background documents and the plain-language summary of the proposed rule of not more than 100 words in length required by the Providing Accountability Through Transparency Act of 2023, 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(4). <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Megan Campbell, Office of Child Care, 202-690-6499 or <E T="03">megan.campbell@acf.hhs.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Table of Contents</HD> <EXTRACT> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">I. Background</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">Effective Dates</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">Severability</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">II. Statutory Authority</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">III. Discussion of Proposed Changes</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">IV. Regulatory Process Matters</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">Paperwork Reduction Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">Regulatory Flexibility Act</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">Executive Order 13132</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">Assessment of Federal Regulations and Policies on Families</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP1-2">Regulatory Review</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">VI. Tribal Consultation Statement</FP> <FP SOURCE="FP-2">List of Subjects in 45 CFR Part 98</FP> </EXTRACT> <HD SOURCE="HD1"> I. Background</HD> In response to requests from Tribal Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) Lead Agencies for more flexibility on family income eligibility to better meet community needs and to recent statutory changes to eligibility in the Tribal Head Start program, this NPRM proposes a regulatory change to allow all Tribal CCDF Lead Agencies to serve Indian children (as defined by the Tribal Lead Agency) in their service area regardless of family income or assets. This NPRM is also responsive to Executive Order 14112, <E T="03">Reforming Federal Funding and Support for Tribal Nations To Better Embrace Our Trust Responsibilities and Promote the Next Era of Tribal Self-Determination,</E> which directs agencies to “increase the accessibility, equity, flexibility, and utility of Federal funding.” This proposal will provide Tribal Nations with more flexibility to better meet community needs, address calls for greater Tribal sovereignty, and facilitate better alignment between Tribal CCDF and Tribal Head Start programs. The Child Care and Development Block Grant Act (42 U.S.C. 9857 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), hereafter referred to as the “Act,” together with section 418 of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 618) authorize CCDF, which is the primary Federal funding source to Tribes, States, and Territories devoted to supporting families with low incomes access to child care and to increasing the quality of child care for all children. CCDF plays a vital role in supporting child development and family well-being, facilitating parent employment, training, and education, and improving the economic well-being of participating families. In FY 2024, 264 Tribal Lead Agencies representing 546 federally recognized Tribal Nations received CCDF grants totaling $600 million. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Annual Tribal CCDF awards range from $70,000 to $88 million per year. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">https://www.acf.hhs.gov/occ/data/gy-2024-ccdf-tribal-allocations-based-appropriations.</E> </FTNT> The Act does not explicitly apply most of its provisions to the Tribal CCDF program, so with some exceptions and within certain parameters, the Secretary of Health and Human Services has the authority to determine many of the CCDF requirements for Tribal Lead Agencies, including the family income eligibility requirements for children to receive services from Tribal CCDF programs. Current Tribal CCDF regulations at 45 CFR 98.81(b)(1) include different family income eligibility requirements and flexibilities based on a Tribe's award allocation size in FY 2016. Tribes who had allocations under $250,000 in 2016 (155 Tribal Lead Agencies) may serve any Indian child (as defined by the Tribal Lead Agency) in the defined service area, regardless of family income or assets. However, Tribal Lead Agencies who had allocations above $250,000 in 2016 are subject to the same CCDF income eligibility standard as States, set forth at 45 CFR 98.20(a)(2)—family income cannot be more than 85 percent of Grantee Median Income and the family must pass an asset test. This proposed rule would provide the 109 Tribal Lead Agencies with medium and large allocations the flexibility to disregard family income and assets in determining family eligibility for CCDF. This would extend the flexibility Tribes with smaller allocations have to disregard family income to all Tribal CCDF Lead Agencies. Tribes, at their discretion, could continue to choose to use family income criteria for eligibility, but this would no longer be a requirement. This proposal does not alter existing flexibilities that permit Tribal Lead Agencies to apply categorical eligibility criteria for families under certain conditions. Tribal Nations have requested greater flexibility for CCDF family income eligibility. Tribes report the rules do not provide the flexibility necessary for Tribal Nations to implement CCDF programs in ways that best meet the needs of the children and families in their communities. The significant variation between Tribal Nation child care needs, infrastructure, and location as well as the individuality of the 546 federally-recognized Tribal Nations receiving CCDF make the 85 percent grantee median income eligibility threshold poorly suited to Tribal Nations, hindering their ability to effectively and efficiently using CCDF to serve children and families. OCC recently sought feedback from Tribal Nations and other interested parties on areas where more flexibility and/or different program rules would better serve children, families, and Tribal Nations through a formal Request for Information (RFI), published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> at 88 FR 48409 (July 27, 2023). Throughout the RFI feedback process and other feedback processes, Tribal Lead Agencies expressed appreciation for many CCDF flexibilities but explained current categorical eligibility rules were complicated, burdensome, and too limited and that standard family income eligibility rules were too narrow to meet community needs. Many Tribal Lead Agencies expressed support for changing eligibility requirements so they can serve Indian children (as defined by the Tribal Lead Agency), regardless of family income. This proposal will also benefit Tribal Nations by better aligning family income eligibility rules in the Tribal CCDF and Head Start programs. At the request of Tribal Nations and the Biden-Harris Administration, the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2024 (Pub. L. 118-47) included a legislative change to section 645 of the Head Start Act, 42 U.S.C. 6840, to allow Tribal Head Start programs to serve children in their service area regardless of family income. The Head Start Act, unlike the CCDBG Act, required legislative action to make this change. This important new Head Start flexibility better supports Tribal sovereignty and allows Tribal Head Start programs to better meet the needs of children and families in their communities. However, it inadvertently makes CCDF more restrictive than Head Start, creating unintended implementation challenges for Tribes and barriers to effectively and efficiently using multiple types of early childhood Federal funding to support comprehensive early learning services, child development, and family well-being. This challenge is especially salient since almost all Tribal Head Start grantees administer a Tribal CCDF program. This proposal would better align Head Start and CCDF and allow Tribal Nations the necessary flexibility to determine how early childhood program family income eligibility determinations can best support their communities. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Effective Dates</H ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 22k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━