Implement Alabama Child Care Subsidy Program (CCSP)

[hua7450]

Summary

Implements Alabama Child Care Subsidy Program (CCSP) in PolicyEngine.

Closes #8321

Regulatory Authority

• CCDF State Plan FFY 2025-2027 — primary regulatory source (301 pp.)
• Child Care Fact Sheet (Jan 2024) — copay & income table (single page)
• Provider Rate Chart (Effective April 11, 2022) — reimbursement rates by region/type/age/STAR
• 2024 Cost of Child Care Study — market rate methodology (79 pp.)

Program Overview

• Official name: Alabama Child Care Subsidy Program (CCSP). Informally "CCAP".
• Agency: AL DHR / Child Care Services Division / Office of Child Care Subsidy
• Operational delivery: 4 regional Child Care Management Agencies (CMAs) covering 9 service regions
• Funding: CCDF (federal block grant) + state matching
• Effective dates: rates 2022-04-11; fee scale 2024-01-01

Eligibility

Requirement	Source	How Modeled
Child under 13 (or 19 if disabled)	State Plan §2.2.1 (p. 20)	al_ccsp_eligible_child
Initial income ≤ 180% FPL	State Plan §2.2.4 (p. 24)	al_ccsp_income_eligible with al_ccsp_enrolled = False
Continuing income ≤ 200% FPL	State Plan §2.2.4 (p. 39)	al_ccsp_income_eligible with al_ccsp_enrolled = True
Hard cap ≤ 85% SMI	45 CFR 98.20 + State Plan §2.5.2 (pp. 24, 35-39)	al_ccsp_income_eligible (uses federal hhs_smi)
Asset limit ≤ $1,000,000	State Plan §2.2.6 (p. 27)	is_ccdf_asset_eligible (federal CCDF helper, reused)
Activity ≥ 15 hrs/week	State Plan §2.2.2 (pp. 21-23)	al_ccsp_activity_eligible (with meets_ccdf_activity_test fallback for job training, education, etc.)
Immigration	45 CFR 98	is_ccdf_immigration_eligible_child (federal CCDF helper, reused)
Protective services waiver (income & activity)	State Plan §2.2.2(f) (p. 23)	al_ccsp_protective_services via is_in_foster_care, is_homeless
Alabama residency	State Plan §2.2 (p. 20)	defined_for = StateCode.AL

Family unit ≈ SPMUnit (PE's SPMUnit may include unrelated cohabitants that AL excludes; documented as known approximation).

Income Calculation

• Gross monthly income — no deductions ("Regulations allow for no deductions to gross income" — Fact Sheet)
• Counted sources: see income/countable_income/sources.yaml (employment, self-employment, farm operations, SS, pensions, unemployment, workers' comp, TANF, SSI, state supplement, interest, dividends, alimony, veterans' benefits)
• Excluded: child support received, spousal support received, room rent
• Weekly→monthly multiplier: WEEKS_IN_YEAR / MONTHS_IN_YEAR (52/12 ≈ 4.3333; the regulatory 4.333 is just this ratio rounded)
• FPG year: Alabama's published income tables use the prior calendar year's HHS poverty guidelines (since HHS publishes new guidelines mid-January). The Jan-2024 Fact Sheet's family-size income thresholds match 2023 FPG values exactly (e.g., 100% FPL fam of 2 = $19,720/yr → $1,643/mo on the Fact Sheet, which is 2023 FPG, not 2024 FPG $20,440). al_ccsp_income_eligible and al_ccsp_weekly_copay_per_child therefore pull FPG for period.start.year - 1.
• Negative countable income: al_ccsp_weekly_copay_per_child floors monthly_income at 0 before computing the FPL ratio, so self-employment / farm losses land in the $0 copay band rather than producing a negative FPL ratio.

Family Fee (Copay)

Weekly per-child fee, sliding scale by FPL band — single unified 11-band scale indexed by FPL ratio (initial applicants cap at 180% FPL, continuing recipients cap at 200% FPL):

FPL band	Fee/week/child
0-100%	$0
101-110%	$18
111-120%	$21
121-130%	$24
131-140%	$27
141-150%	$30
151-160%	$33
161-170%	$36
171-180%	$39
181-190%	$42
191-200%	$45

Copay waivers (encapsulated in al_ccsp_copay_waived):

• ≤100% FPL (encoded in fee table $0 band, §3.3.1(i))
• Family with a disabled child (§3.3.1(iv))
• Family with a Head Start / EHS child (§3.3.1(v))
• Family authorized under Protective Service — foster, kinship, or homelessness per §2.2.2(f) (§3.3.1(vi))

Copay applies per eligible child in care (is_eligible_child & childcare_hours_per_week > 0) — ineligible siblings (over age, undocumented, etc.) do not multiply the copay.

Provider Rates

486-cell rate matrix transcribed verbatim from the Provider Rate Chart "Effective April 11, 2022":

• Provider types: Center, GFDC (Group Family Day Care), FDC (Family Day Care), INFORMAL (flat weekly cap)
• Regions: 9 (Huntsville, Tuscaloosa, Mobile, Ft Payne, Birmingham, Talladega, Montgomery, Dothan, Opelika)
• Age categories: Infant/Toddler (0-36mo), Preschool (37-59mo), School-Age (≥60mo) — per Rate Chart "Key to Care Level"
• Quality tiers: Base + STAR 1-5 (transcribed cell-by-cell, not derived)
• Part-time (≤25 hrs/wk): ½ × full-time rate — applies to INFORMAL too, so informal part-time = $25 (half of the $50 full-time cap)
• INFORMAL cap: $50/wk full-time; $25/wk part-time
• County → region lookup masked by state_code_str == "AL" to prevent non-AL households crashing on missing keys
• Default region: BIRMINGHAM (used as select() fallback for AL households whose county doesn't map cleanly)

Benefit Calculation

Per-child weekly subsidy = max(0, min(provider charge, max weekly rate) − per-child copay).

Per-child monthly subsidy = weekly subsidy × (WEEKS_IN_YEAR / MONTHS_IN_YEAR) × is_paying_child.

Family-level copay split equally across eligible children in care. SPMUnit benefit = sum of per-child monthly subsidies.

Parameter Folder Structure

Parameters organized by concept rather than by lifecycle phase:

parameters/gov/states/al/dhr/ccsp/
  activity/hours_minimum.yaml
  age/{child_limit, disabled_child_limit}.yaml
  age_category/months.yaml
  copay/fee_by_fpl.yaml
  income/countable_income/sources.yaml
  income/limit/{fpl_initial, fpl_continuing, smi_cap}.yaml
  rates/{maximum_weekly_full_time, part_time_multiplier,
         full_time_hours_threshold, informal_weekly_cap}.yaml
  region/counties.yaml

Files Added

policyengine_us/parameters/gov/states/al/dhr/ccsp/   (see structure above)

policyengine_us/variables/gov/states/al/dhr/ccsp/
  al_ccsp.py
  al_ccsp_age_category.py
  al_ccsp_countable_income.py
  al_ccsp_enrolled.py
  al_ccsp_provider_type.py
  al_ccsp_quality_tier.py
  al_ccsp_region.py
  al_child_care_subsidies.py
  copay/{al_ccsp_copay_waived, al_ccsp_weekly_copay_per_child}.py
  eligibility/{al_ccsp_activity_eligible, al_ccsp_eligible, al_ccsp_eligible_child,
               al_ccsp_income_eligible, al_ccsp_protective_services}.py
  payment/al_ccsp_maximum_weekly_rate.py

policyengine_us/tests/policy/baseline/gov/states/al/dhr/ccsp/
  (15 YAML files, 129 test cases)

Modified:
- policyengine_us/programs.yaml (registered AL CCSP under CCDF state_implementations)
- policyengine_us/parameters/gov/hhs/ccdf/child_care_subsidy_programs.yaml (added al_child_care_subsidies)
- changelog.d/al-ccap.added.md

Test Coverage

129 tests including multi-child mixed-eligibility scenarios (3 children with 1 eligible / 1 over-age / 1 undocumented), informal part-time, all 4 copay waiver categories, SMI hard cap, exact FPL and SMI boundaries, the 2025-01 carry-forward year, and negative countable income (self-employment loss does not inflate subsidy).

Not Modeled

• 7% federal copay cap (45 CFR 98.45(k)) — State Plan §3.1.1.a notes Alabama has submitted a waiver request; the modeled fee table follows the State Plan's flat sliding-fee schedule and does NOT enforce the 7% ceiling
• Protective-services sub-populations (3 of 5 per State Plan §2.2.2(f)) — child welfare engagement, EHS-CCP enrollment, kinship care / "TANF-Other Relative" are not tracked at the moment; missing categories under-count eligibility because protective services waives both income and activity tests (documented in al_ccsp_protective_services.py)
• EHS-CCP as distinct from Head Start (proxied via is_enrolled_in_head_start)
• In loco parentis caregivers — al_ccsp_activity_eligible approximates the §2.2.2(d)(ii) caregiver set with is_tax_unit_head_or_spouse; grandparent / kinship / foster caregivers who aren't the tax-unit head won't be checked individually, but meets_ccdf_activity_test can be set as a fallback (documented in al_ccsp_activity_eligible.py)
• Granular job-training / GED / internship enrollment status (use meets_ccdf_activity_test input as fallback)
• Irregular / temporary income exclusion (§2.2.5)
• McKinney-Vento homelessness flag (uses is_homeless Household variable instead)
• CMA discretion / outreach / intake operations (§2.4, §2.5.3)
• Job-search-alone activity
• Priority / waitlist categories (§2.3)
• 12-month continuity / mid-period income changes (§2.5.2)
• Continuing-tier (200% FPL) graduation: al_ccsp_enrolled is a bare input defaulting to False, so every microdata household is treated as a new applicant unless this input is explicitly set by the caller

Test plan

• 129 tests pass locally
• make format clean
• CI passes
• Regulatory reviewer verifies: disabled-parent activity exemption (not in §2.2.2 text but standard cross-state convention per SC/VA), 7% copay cap omission, the §3.3.1(vi) Protective-Service copay waiver interpretation for homeless families, prior-year FPG lag in Fact Sheet operations

🤖 Generated with /encode-policy-v2

[codecov]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 100.00%. Comparing base (8cb60e7) to head (ad3e09e).
⚠️ Report is 45 commits behind head on main.

Additional details and impacted files

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  Coverage   100.00%   100.00%            
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  Files            3        16    +13     
  Lines           63       271   +208     
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+ Hits            63       271   +208     

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