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North Carolina

29 3. Describes how the state verifies the actual hours of participation for each activity, including the procedures for obtaining and maintaining documentation of hours of participation. 4. Describes the methods of daily supervision for each unpaid work activity.

All county departments of social services/agencies must adhere to the requirements as outlined in the State’s Work Verification Plan.

CHILD CARE DEFINITIONS

County departments of social services/agencies use the following guidelines to evaluate whether adequate child care is available for single parents with a child under age 6. At each occurrence of non-compliance with the work requirement for a single parent caring for a child under age 6, the county department of social services/agencies will document in the case record the reason for the parent’s non-compliance. If the parent states that he/she is unable to participate because needed child care is not available, the county department of social services/agencies will evaluate each of the following criteria and document their findings in the case record. If the county finds that the parent’s claim is valid, the sanction or loss of Work First benefits for non-compliance is not applied.

Appropriate Child Care

• Care in a regulated child care center or family child care home that has a license, or • Care in a license exempt child care arrangement that meets the requirements of North Carolina’s Subsidized Child Care Program. • Child care options must have hours of operation which coincide with the work schedules of parents and meet any special needs of the individual children.

Reasonable Distance

• In evaluating “reasonable distance,” counties consider the total time it takes for parents to travel one-way from home to the child care provider, then to work or work-related activity. Because of the differences in North Carolina’s geography and highway/road systems, county departments of social services/agencies have maximum discretion to decide what is “reasonable” for individual families based on their resources (i.e. whether they have a vehicle in working order or families’ resources available for transporting the family) and local transportation considerations. • As a guideline, counties should consider that it might not be reasonable to require families receiving Work First to travel more than 80 minutes one-way to work and child care. Eighty minutes is approximately four times the average one-way commute time in North Carolina (not including stops at child care arrangements), based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

This does not preclude an exemption from the sanction or a loss of Work First benefits based on a shorter commute if the county considers the commute an obstacle to children’s healthy development or the family’s self-sufficiency goals.

Unsuitability of License Exempt Child Care