Child Care Automated Reporting System (CARS) Technical Assistance
The Child Care Automated Reporting System (CARS) TA Team supports States, Territory, and Tribal Child Care and Development Fund grantees in collecting, managing, analyzing, and reporting child care administrative data. The CARS TA Team’s efforts are available to help build or enhance grantees' capacity to improve the quality of administrative data and are provided through email, a toll-free helpline, remote national and regional trainings events, customized onsite technical assistance activities, and specialized data tools.
The Child Care Data Tracker is a comprehensive case management tool designed to support the collection, management, and utilization of the case-level information needed for the generation of the required ACF-700 and ACF-801 reports.
The State and Territory Reporting Technical Bulletins provide guidance to all grantees related to the data reporting requirements, data element definitions and format, and submission processes.
The state-level aggregate report, or ACF-800, is one of two data collections undertaken by the Office of Child Care pursuant to the requirements of the Child Care and Development Block Grant of 1990. All Child Care and Development Fund lead agencies in the States, the District of Columbia, and Territories are responsible for completing it.
The ACF-801 case-level data is collected monthly and reported either monthly or quarterly. Quarterly data is reported 60 days after the end of each quarter and monthly data is due 90 days after the reported month. All Lead Agencies in the States, the District of Columbia, and Territories are responsible for collecting and reporting ACF-801 data.
The ACF-118 serves as the agreement between the Lead Agency and the Federal Government as to how CCDF programs will be administered in conformance with legislative requirements, pertinent federal regulations, and other instructions and guidelines issued by ACF.
Each Tribal Lead Agency must submit the information requested on the ACF-700 Annual Report by December 31, as stipulated by the statute, for the preceding federal fiscal year. Fiscal years run from October 1 through September 30. For example, the FFY 2004 ACF-700 report, which covers from October 1, 2003 through September 30, 2004, is due December 31, 2004.
The ACF-118a serves as the agreement between the Lead Agency and the Federal Government as to how CCDF programs will be administered in conformance with legislative requirements, pertinent federal regulations, and other instructions and guidelines issued by ACF.