Child Care Assistance Program Approval Rate - Boulder County, Colorado

About the Program

Category: Civic Education and Public Information (Best in Category)

Year: 2022

The Boulder County Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP) is dedicated to continuous improvement and was not satisfied with the team’s application approval rate of 42% meaning that 58% of clients were being denied from this crucially supportive program, mostly for solvable reasons. The team implemented lean continuous improvement practices using an A3 8-step problem-solving tool to develop countermeasures to test new processes. In August 2021, the team tested a new workflow they nicknamed the “suspended missing information (MI)” process. Various measures including the time it took for a client to receive an eligibility determination, the number of case touches, application approval rate, and staff satisfaction with the new workflow were measured to compare to baseline data to see if the new process improved the outcome for a client’s application. Most dramatically, the average number of case touches decreased from 5.3 to 3.8 indicating processing efficiency gains. Additionally, the average number of days it took a client to get a determination decreased from 36 to 25. This is a significant 11-day time saving which when applied to a family’s life could mean the financial savings of $699 (based on 9 weekdays of a level 3 provider infant reimbursement rate). The time it took a technician to determine eligibility on a case once all verifications were turned in decreased from 12 to 4.3 days and the overall approval rate for applications rose from 42% to 56%. Based on the improvements seen in the test cycle, the team standardized the workflow starting in January 2022 and has already seen additional efficiency gains and benefits to the client.