Maryann Durrant (USBE):
Each participant who is claimed at the free or reduced rate must have an IEF that has been completed by the parent. If the IEF isn’t filled out completely, the participant should be claimed at the paid rate until the IEF is completed. In this training we’ll discuss what the parent needs to complete on the IEF.
In order to qualify at the free or reduced rate, the parent would only need to fill out the front of the form. We’ll start with step one. The instructions are to list all household members who are infants, children, and students up to and including grade 12. So the parent would fill out all children in the household, even if they’re not attending your center. For the children not attending your center, you could instruct the parent to leave the date of birth and normal days and hours in care section blank for that child. If one or more of the enrolled children is in head start, is a foster child, or homeless, migrant or runaway, have them check the appropriate box. As a side note, foster child would only apply to children who are formally placed in foster care, not an unofficial care situation.
Now step 2. Do any household members (including you) currently participate in one or more of the following eligible assistance programs. If you are operating a child care center, the three programs that are eligible are SNAP, TANF-FEP, and FDPIR. If you are operating an adult center, there are different eligible programs. Contact your specialist to learn more. If one of the family members are on one of the eligible programs, have them complete this section. If they aren’t on any of these programs, they’ll leave it blank. It’s important to note that just because you might be receiving DWS funds for a participant, doesn’t mean that they’re on one of these qualifying programs. You couldn’t simply write in the DWS case number that you have for the participant and count that as an eligible case number. The parent would need to fill the case number in if they’re on one of the eligible programs.
Now on to step three. This is where the income is reported. You can see that if they answered yes in step 2 – meaning they input their case number, they do NOT need to complete step 3. Any child income would be reported here, so this might be if one of the children receives social security income or something similar. If no child income is coming in, the parent can leave it blank. Next the parent needs to list all adult household members. So this is anyone in the household that is over the age of 18 and the income that they receive. Then they enter in the total household members and either the last four digits of the SSN or check that there is no SSN. The total household members isn’t essential, if they don’t enter the total household members, you don’t need to worry about it, if any of the other information is missing, you’ll need to follow up on it.
A common source of confusion is the frequency of the pay. The participant needs to report their income and how often they receive that income. The options are weekly, bi-weekly, 2x’s a month and monthly. Weekly means they get paid once a week, monthly means they get paid once a month. Those are pretty straightforward. Bi-weekly and 2x a month are the ones that usually get confused. Bi-weekly means that the parent gets paid every other week. In this case, they would get 26 pay checks over the course of a year. 2x a month means that they get paid two times a month, for example, they get a pay check on the 1st and the 15th of each month. A parent getting paid this often will get 24 paychecks in a year. This is important when you’re approving the IEFs, so make sure that you have a solid understanding of the difference between the two. Also, the instructions state in step 3, letter B that if the income is left blank it means that there is no income to report.
Now for Step 4. This is the parent information. What is absolutely required is the signature and date. If they fill in the other information, that is great, but if not, you don’t need to worry about it. That’s all that they would need to complete on the front side of the IEF.
On the back of the IEF there are some instructions for the parent as well as an optional place for the parent to report the children’s race and ethnicity. We realize that these options don’t encompass all possible race and ethnicities. Tell the parent to do their best. And that’s it. Once you have the front, and possibly the back filled out by the parent, the IEF is complete and ready for you to approve. We’ll go through how to approve the IEF in a different video.
Now, what if the parent doesn’t fill everything out completely on the IEF. You have a few options in this case. One option would be to give the IEF back to the parent and ask them to fill in the missing information. Another option would only work if a very small amount of information is missing, say, they forgot to check that the child is in head start, or they didn’t list one of their children who lives in the house that is 17 years old. In this case, you could get the information from the parent and fill it in for them, but make sure that you document this with your initials, the date, and how you got the information.
Another question with getting completed IEFs is about children who are being paid with state funds. You might think, I have the DWS case number for the child, can I just fill in all of the information on the IEF and have the parent sign it? No. This is not how the IEF is intended to be completed. The IEF is a report from the parent about their income or their eligibility based on an assistance program. Also, as we mentioned before, just because you have a DWS case number for the child doesn’t mean that the child is on one of the eligible programs. Do not complete the IEF for the parent.
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