Ask a group of state child care administrators what ‘program integrity’ means to them, and you’ll get a range of answers. Some will talk about fraud prevention. Others will focus on compliance, federal reporting, or improper payment rates. A few will describe the operational grind of trying to maintain oversight with limited staff and disconnected systems.
All of them are right. But none of those answers alone capture the full picture.
At TCC Solutions, we define CCDF program integrity as the systems, processes, and controls that ensure child care assistance is administered accurately, fairly, and in accordance with federal and state requirements. It covers both unintentional errors, mistakes in data entry, incomplete documentation, misunderstandings of policy, and intentional violations, including deliberate misrepresentation of eligibility, falsification of records, and provider fraud.
Addressing the full spectrum of these risks requires more than a single policy or a single tool. It requires a coordinated framework, one that brings together the right people, the right processes, and the right technology.
Why a Framework Matters
Program integrity failures rarely happen because one person made a deliberate choice to commit fraud. More often, they happen because the systems around that person weren’t designed to catch errors, or because the people responsible for oversight didn’t have the tools, training, or capacity to do the job well.
A framework matters because it shifts program integrity from a reactive posture to a proactive one. Instead of responding to problems after they’ve caused improper payments or triggered federal scrutiny, agencies with strong frameworks are identifying risks early, addressing gaps systematically, and building the institutional muscle to sustain oversight over time.
People: The Foundation
No technology or process can compensate for gaps in the human side of program integrity. Strong programs start with clear roles.
This means identifying program integrity leads across policy, operations, monitoring, audit, legal, and IT. It means ensuring that staff understand the CCDF risk landscape, including the most common red flags for eligibility errors, documentation anomalies, and provider compliance issues. And it means building enough capacity, whether through internal staffing or external augmentation, to handle monitoring cycles, case reviews, and federal reporting without creating backlogs that become their own risk.
TCC’s work with state agencies consistently surfaces the same gap: program integrity responsibilities are often distributed across teams without a clear owner, and the people doing the work often lack the training and tools to do it consistently.
Process: The Operating System
People can only work with the processes they have. Effective program integrity requires documented, repeatable processes across several key areas.
Risk assessment is the starting point, identifying where the highest integrity risks exist, building a red-flag catalog, and defining sampling strategies that focus monitoring resources on the cases and providers most likely to surface problems. From there, agencies need structured monitoring approaches: both onsite reviews that validate compliance in real settings, and remote monitoring that extends coverage between onsite cycles.
Quality assurance closes the loop. Without periodic QA sampling, trend analysis, and corrective action tracking, agencies have no systematic way to know whether their program integrity efforts are working, or where to invest next.
Technology: The Force Multiplier
Technology doesn’t replace people or processes. It amplifies them.
Modern CCDF technology infrastructure should support electronic time and attendance tracking, integration of eligibility with licensing and quality data, connections to external verification sources, OCR document intake, AI-assisted anomaly detection, and real-time reporting dashboards. These tools reduce manual workload, catch anomalies earlier, and give staff the visibility they need to focus on the cases that most require human judgment.
The challenge is that most state agencies are managing CCDF programs with technology that wasn’t designed for this level of integration. Eligibility systems, licensing databases, attendance tools, and payment platforms often operate as separate silos, which means staff are manually bridging gaps that should be automatic.
Putting It Together
The People, Process, Technology framework is not a checklist to complete once and file away. It’s a continuous operating model. Agencies that take it seriously are constantly asking: Do we have the right people in place? Are our processes documented and followed consistently? Is our technology giving us the visibility we need?
Those questions, and honest answers to them, are what separate agencies that are managing program integrity from agencies that are building it.
In the months ahead, TCC will be publishing tools and frameworks to help state agencies assess where they stand and take practical steps forward. The starting point is understanding the framework. The work is applying it.
Ready to go deeper?
Download the White Paper: Strengthening CCDF Program Integrity: A Practical Framework for States
Contact TCC Solutions to schedule a conversation: info@tccsolutions.com | www.tccsolutions.com