Wisconsin Did Not Always Comply With Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program Requirements

The Wisconsin Department of Children and Families (DCF) did not always comply with Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program requirements and the terms and conditions of the program's grants, resulting in unallowable expenditures totaling $275,175. Specifically, for the five subrecipients reviewed, DCF did not ensure that one subrecipient used grant funding for allowable purposes. We also found that for three of the five subrecipients, DCF did not ensure that subrecipients' time-and-effort reporting systems complied with Federal requirements. In addition, DCF did not have adequate procedures to monitor subrecipients, could not provide an approved budget for one of its subrecipient agreements, and did not comply with Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (FFATA) reporting requirements. We did not identify any unallowable expenditures at the State level.

We recommended that DCF (1) refund to the Federal Government $275,175 in unallowable expenditures, (2) ensure that its subrecipients spend MIECHV grant funds in accordance with Federal requirements, ensure that subrecipients comply with time-and-effort reporting requirements, (3) develop written procedures related to subrecipient financial management areas to improve its monitoring of subrecipients' fiscal activities, (4) follow its existing records retention policy, and (5) continue to work with HRSA to ensure compliance with the reporting provisions of the FFATA.

In comments on our draft report, DCF concurred with our nonmonetary recommendations and described corrective actions that it has taken or plans to take. DCF did not concur with the entire amount of our monetary recommendation and provided additional documentation to support some of the questioned costs in our draft report.