Important Updates to CAPS Policy

January 31, 2019 

Dear CAPS Child Care Provider,

Thank you for participating in one (or both) of the CAPS webinars held on January 18 and January 23, 2019. Those webinars provided important information about February 2019 changes to CAPS policy. Recordings of the webinars are available at www.CAPS.decal.ga.gov under Updates -> Webinars. 

Following is a recap of the changes explained in the webinars: 

1. We’ve created a new Health and Safety Standards Policy to establish guidelines to protect the health and safety of children who receive CAPS.

• The new policy is made up primarily of requirements that existed in other sections of CAPS policy. 
• In the new policy, however, we reorganized and added information about monitoring and enforcing health and safety standards for license-exempt and informal CAPS providers. 
• Effective February 1, 2019, health and safety standards for license-exempt and informal providers will be enforced in an appropriate and progressive manner depending on the type, severity, and number of violations.

2. We’ve established a new Program Integrity Policy to clarify how DECAL, child care providers, and families work together to ensure CAPS funds are managed with transparency and integrity.

• This new policy is made up primarily of information that existed in other sections of CAPS policy. 
• In the new policy, however, we reorganized and added information about the prevention, detection, and investigation processes that were already in place but were not outlined in CAPS policy. 

3. In this policy revision, we renamed sign in/sign out logs to arrival and departure records to better align with child care licensing rules. These terms always referred to the same form, but we hope to prevent confusion by now referring to these documents using the same name. 
4. To the Parental Rights and Responsibilities Policy, we added that the parental authority or authorized representative is responsible for signing their child(ren) in and out of care each day. We note that failure to sign children in and out of care each day may result in the provider being assessed an overpayment as prescribed in CAPS Program Integrity Policy.
   
   
5. To the Provider Rights and Responsibilities Policy, we made minor revisions to align with the new Health and Safety Standards Policy and Program Integrity Policy. 

If you were unable to participate in one of the webinars about these upcoming changes, I highly encourage you to go to www.CAPS.decal.ga.gov under Updates -> Webinars to access the recording. 

Thank you again for all you do to provide quality learning environments for our families. 

Sincerely,

Elisabetta Kasfir

Deputy Commissioner for Federal Programs