Implement South Carolina CCAP (Child Care Assistance Program)

[hua7450]

Summary

Implements South Carolina's Child Care Scholarship Program (CCAP) in PolicyEngine, covering the Working Families track. Includes eligibility logic, income counting, copayment fee scale, provider rate tables, and benefit calculation.

This branch also fixes the large-family copay edge cases in the South Carolina fee scale implementation, narrows the disabled-child copay exemption to actual dependent children, and removes an unused sc_ccap_head_start_category variable and fixture.

Closes #7934

Regulatory Authority

• SC CCAP Policy Manual Vol. 038 (Jan 2025) — primary source for eligibility, income rules, provider types, payment rates, fee scales
• Fee Scale 2023-2024 — pre-FPL-exempt copayment schedule (SMI ratio tiers)
• Fee Scale 2024-2025 — copayment schedule with 150% FPL exemption
• Fee Scale 2025-2026 — current copayment schedule
• Income Standards 2024-2025 — 85% SMI thresholds by family size
• Maximum Payments FFY2023 — provider rate tables by type, quality, age, geography
• CCDF State Plan FFY 2025-2027 — federal plan with copay caps and exemptions

Program Overview

• Official name: SC Child Care Scholarship Program (formerly SC Voucher Program)
• Administration: State-administered by SC Department of Social Services (SCDSS)
• Federal authority: Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 2014; 45 CFR Part 98
• Scope: Working Families track (funding category 4 of 17)

Eligibility

Requirement	Source	How Modeled
SC residency	Policy Manual 2.1.1	defined_for = StateCode.SC
Child age < 13 (< 19 special needs)	Policy Manual 2.1.2	sc_ccap_eligible_child with parameterized age limits
Immigration: US citizen or qualified alien	Policy Manual 2.1.3-2.1.4	is_ccdf_immigration_eligible_child (federal)
Child must be a dependent	Policy Manual 2.1.7	is_tax_unit_dependent
Activity: work >= 15 hrs/wk or school/training	Policy Manual 2.1.5	sc_ccap_activity_eligible
Income <= 85% SMI	Policy Manual 2.13; CCDF Plan 2.2.4	sc_ccap_income_eligible
Assets < $1M	Policy Manual 2.1.16	is_ccdf_asset_eligible (federal)
At least 1 eligible child	Implicit	sc_ccap_eligible checks eligible child count > 0

Income Rules

• Countable income computed via sources.yaml — 13 included sources (employment, self-employment, farm, Social Security, pension, UI, workers comp, child support, alimony, interest, dividends, rental, veterans benefits). TANF is excluded to avoid a circular dependency (tanf -> childcare_expenses -> sc_ccap -> sc_ccap_countable_income -> tanf).
• Key exclusions: SSI, SNAP, EITC, foster care payments, education grants (Pell, GI Bill), gifts, lump sums, capital gains, work-study
• Single 85% SMI threshold for both entrance and exit (unlike RI/MA which use separate thresholds)
• Source: Policy Manual sections 2.1.8, 2.1.14-2.1.15

Copayment (Fee Scale)

The copay formula covers two eras:

Pre-2024-10-01 (SMI ratio method): 5 tiers at fixed SMI ratios (45%/55%/65%/75%/85%). Family size is capped at the published 16-person row so 17+ households inherit the last published thresholds rather than receiving larger derived thresholds.

Post-2024-10-01 (FPL-to-SMI band method): Families at or below 150% FPL pay $0. Above that, positive copay bands are derived only through the last published paid-tier family size. Rows 15-16 remain $0-only per the published fee scale, and 17+ households inherit the capped published row.

This avoids two correctness issues in the original implementation:

• large-family paid tiers no longer collapse to $0 when 150% FPL overtakes 85% SMI
• 17+ households no longer get more generous unpublished thresholds than the size-16 row

Tier	Weekly Fee/Child
0	$0 (post-2024 only, at/below 150% FPL)
1	$6
2	$11
3	$14
4	$17
5	$20

• Max copay: 2% of family income (SC cap; federal cap is 7%)
• $0 copay for: TANF enrolled, foster care, homeless, protective services, a disabled dependent child, Head Start
• Head Start pathway: only the enrolled child (who must also be CCDF-eligible) is covered; non-Head-Start siblings are not charged a copay and are not covered unless the unit also meets standard/protective pathway requirements
• Care arrangement required: children with childcare_hours_per_week = 0 get $0 rate and are excluded from copay count
• Structural parameters:
  • smi_tier_ratios.yaml — SMI ratio per tier (pre-2024)
  • weekly_amounts.yaml — copay per tier
  • max_family_size.yaml — published fee-scale row cap
  • max_paid_family_size.yaml — last post-2024 family size with positive copay tiers

Provider Rates

Full rate tables encoded across all dimensions:

• 6 provider categories: Center, Exempt Center, Group Home, Licensed Family Home, Registered Family Home, FFN
• 5 quality levels: A+, A, B+, B, C (3 for Registered: B+, B, C; flat rates for FFN)
• 7 age groups: Under 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 not in K, 5-12 in school
• 2 geographies: Urban (21 counties) / Rural (25 counties)
• 2 schedules: Full-time (>= 25 hrs/wk) / Half-time (< 25 hrs/wk)
• Surcharges: Special needs $20/wk, Foster care $30/wk
• Second child discount: Provider-determined input sc_ccap_second_child_discount_rate
• Source: Maximum Payments FFY2023

Not Modeled (by design)

What	Source	Why Excluded
12-month eligibility period	CCDF Plan 2.1.1	Temporal; PE evaluates per-period
Dual Language Learners $0 copay	CCDF Plan 3.3.1	No DLL variable in PE
4K Plus Siblings $0 copay	CCDF Plan 3.3.1	No 4K Plus variable in PE
16 non-Working Families funding tracks	Policy Manual / CCDF Plan	Deferred to follow-up

Review Fixes Applied

• Restricted the disabled-child copay exemption to actual dependent children under the program's disabled-child age limit, rather than any disabled person under 19 in the SPM unit.
• Removed the unused sc_ccap_head_start_category variable and its standalone YAML fixture because the main SC CCAP formulas do not depend on it.

Files

policyengine_us/parameters/gov/states/sc/dss/ccap/
  eligibility/
  income/
  copay/
    fpg_exempt_in_effect.yaml
    fpg_exempt_rate.yaml
    income_cap_rate.yaml
    max_family_size.yaml
    max_paid_family_size.yaml
    smi_tier_ratios.yaml
    weekly_amounts.yaml
  time_category/
  age_group/
  surcharge/
  geography/
  rates/

policyengine_us/variables/gov/states/sc/dss/ccap/
  sc_ccap.py
  sc_ccap_countable_income.py
  sc_ccap_maximum_weekly_benefit.py
  sc_ccap_second_child_discount_rate.py
  sc_ccap_time_category.py
  sc_ccap_quality_level.py
  sc_ccap_registered_quality_level.py
  sc_ccap_age_group.py
  sc_ccap_geography.py
  sc_ccap_provider_type.py
  sc_child_care_subsidies.py
  copay/sc_ccap_copay.py
  eligibility/

policyengine_us/tests/policy/baseline/gov/states/sc/dss/ccap/

Validation

Local checks run:

• uv run policyengine-core test policyengine_us/tests/policy/baseline/gov/states/sc/dss/ccap

Status at update time:

• full local SC CCAP baseline suite passed (130 tests)
• GitHub Actions checks are in progress

[codecov]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 100.00%. Comparing base (a982df1) to head (b451804).
⚠️ Report is 215 commits behind head on main.

Additional details and impacted files

@@             Coverage Diff             @@
##             main     #7935      +/-   ##
===========================================
+ Coverage   92.72%   100.00%   +7.27%     
===========================================
  Files           3        18      +15     
  Lines          55       353     +298     
  Branches        2         4       +2     
===========================================
+ Hits           51       353     +302     
+ Misses          3         0       -3     
+ Partials        1         0       -1     

Flag	Coverage Δ
unittests	100.00% <100.00%> (+7.27%)	⬆️

Flags with carried forward coverage won't be shown. Click here to find out more.

☔ View full report in Codecov by Sentry.
📢 Have feedback on the report? Share it here.

🚀 New features to boost your workflow:

• ❄️ Test Analytics: Detect flaky tests, report on failures, and find test suite problems.