Summary

Implements Missouri's Child Care Subsidy program, administered by the DESE Office of Childhood, in PolicyEngine. Missouri colloquially calls this program "CCAP," but the official name is the Child Care Subsidy; the implementation uses the mo_ccs_ variable prefix and lives under gov/states/mo/dese/ccs/ accordingly.

The subsidy is a provider-reimbursement childcare benefit: each eligible child's daily base reimbursement rate (looked up by region, provider type, age group, and time unit) is reduced by a sliding-fee copay, floored at zero, and capped at the family's actual childcare expense. Existing families above the traditional income limit can receive a phased-down ("transitional") subsidy.

Closes #8652

Regulatory Authority

• 5 CSR 25-200.050 (Definitions) and 5 CSR 25-200.060 (Eligibility and Authorization) — Cornell LII. The CSR rule text is thin and incorporates the Child Care Subsidy Eligibility Policy Manual by reference.
• DESE Child Care Subsidy Eligibility Policy Manual (sections 2010 Eligibility, 2025 Payments). The live DESE manual deep links return a branded HTTP 403 WAF page even to a real browser, so the operative manual content was cited to Internet Archive Wayback snapshots of the official DESE pages (snapshot 2021-12-08):
  • 2010.045.10 — Exclusions from Monthly Gross Income
  • 2010.005.00 — Eligibility Unit (EU)
  • 2025.010 — Sliding Fee from Households
• November 2025 Child Care Eligibility Income Guidelines and Sliding Fee Chart — single-page PDF (no page anchor; single page).
• 2025 Rates Held Harmless 2.0 — XLSX (spreadsheet; no page anchor), effective Oct 1, 2025 – Jun 30, 2026.

Program Overview

• Administration: DESE Office of Childhood (the program transferred from the DSS Children's Division to DESE effective 2021-08-28; regulations moved from Title 13 (DSS) to Title 5 (Education), 5 CSR 25-200).
• Benefit type: Provider-reimbursement childcare subsidy. A daily base reimbursement rate (minus the sliding-fee copay) is paid per eligible child, with transitional phase-out tiers for existing families whose income has risen above the traditional limit.

Eligibility

mo_ccs_eligible = has an eligible child & income-eligible & asset-eligible & (activity-eligible | protective services).

Income

• Countable income (mo_ccs_countable_income) = monthly gross income (earned + unearned) of EU members, modeled via an adds list of countable income sources (income/countable_income/sources.yaml).
• Adjusted income (mo_ccs_adjusted_income) = countable gross − health_insurance_premiums, floored at 0. Medical-insurance premiums are the only deduction (5 CSR 25-200.050(2); Manual 2010.045.15).
• Traditional test: adjusted income ≤ 150% FPL by household size (new applicants).
• Transitional test: existing families up to 242% FPL, gated by the mo_ccs_enrolled SPMUnit boolean input (only enrolled recipients can use the >150% path).

The manual's 45-item income-exclusions list (2010.045.10.05–.30) is modeled by omission: sources.yaml enumerates only the ~14 countable PolicyEngine income variables, so any excluded type is simply absent from the list (the SC/WV pattern). Several excluded types have no PolicyEngine equivalent and so drop out automatically (e.g., LIHEAP/energy assistance, in-kind income, lump sums, tribal/restitution payments). Two excluded types cannot be split out cleanly and are documented as known limitations:

• The veterans education-maintenance portion of veterans_benefits — we don't track the education-portion split at the moment, so gross veterans benefits are counted (a slight over-count).
• Earnings of a school-attending child — we don't filter income by the earner's age/school status at the moment.

Benefit Calculation

• Daily base rate (mo_ccs_maximum_daily_benefit) is looked up by region (5) × provider type (5) × age group (3) × time unit (3) from the Daytime rate table. Special-needs/protective-services children use the PS rate column (rates/<provider>/special_needs.yaml).
• Subsidy = Σ over eligible children of min(daily rate × attending days, per-child pre-subsidy expense) − sliding-fee copay, floored at 0 (mo_ccs). The total is also capped at the family's spm_unit_pre_subsidy_childcare_expenses.
• Transitional tiers: TCC1 / TCC2 / TCC3 fund 80% / 60% / 50% of the base rate over the FPL bands 151–185% / 186–215% / 216–242% (transitional/funding_rate.yaml).
• Sliding fee (mo_ccs_copay): a daily fee per child looked up by household size (1–20, via copay/tier/size_N.yaml) × monthly income band, with per-unit fees varying by full / half / part day (copay/daily_fee/{full,half,part}_unit.yaml). A $1/year minimum applies to TANF-only income or income below 25% of State Median Income (minimum_annual_fee.yaml, smi_minimum_rate.yaml). Special-needs children are exempt from the sliding fee.

Requirements Coverage

All 31 in-scope requirements are covered (106 tests pass). Out-of-scope rate-table differentials (evening/weekend, accreditation, +25% enhancement) and administrative provisions are listed under "Not Modeled."

Not Modeled (by design)

Historical Notes

• The program transferred from the DSS Children's Division to the DESE Office of Childhood in 2021; its regulations moved from Title 13 (DSS) to Title 5 (Education), 5 CSR 25-200.
• All parameters are effective 2025-10-01, the start of the current rate/chart era (Oct 2025 – Jun 2026).

Verification TODO

• The income thresholds (150% traditional / 242% transitional FPL) were corroborated by the chart's own per-tier dollar bounds: for household size 1, the tier-7 upper bound of $1,956/mo = 150% of the monthly federal poverty guideline, and the transitional ceiling lands at 242%. A final check against the live manual 2010.045.00 is still advisable. (Two Wayback strategies disagreed — one read 138%, the other 150%/151–242%; the current Nov-2025 chart governs and was used.)
• Several DESE manual pages return HTTP 403 to automated access (and to a real browser). The operative content was recovered via Internet Archive Wayback snapshots (2021-12-08), corroborated by 5 CSR 25-200 and the current chart/XLSX. The recovered manual framework is stable, but a reviewer with browser access to the live manual should spot-check the recovered sections.
• Region county classification was read from the XLSX "Breakdown Of Counties" sheet; Regions 1–4 are enumerated in region/region_N_counties.yaml and Region 5 is the catch-all default.

Files Added

policyengine_us/parameters/gov/states/mo/dese/ccs/    48 parameter files
policyengine_us/variables/gov/states/mo/dese/ccs/     16 variable files
policyengine_us/tests/policy/baseline/gov/states/mo/dese/ccs/   15 test files (106 cases)

Federal wiring edits (2):

• policyengine_us/parameters/gov/hhs/ccdf/child_care_subsidy_programs.yaml — registers mo_child_care_subsidies in the federal CCDF aggregator.
• policyengine_us/programs.yaml — adds the Missouri CCS program entry (variable: mo_ccs, parameter_prefix: gov.states.mo.dese.ccs, status: complete).

Changelog: changelog.d/mo-ccap.added.md.