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July 1, 2026

109 Wisconsin Works (W-2) Financial and Employment Planners (FEPs) do not determine the child care needs for families that participate in the W-2 program. The agency worker must use the activity information from the W-2 Employability Plan (EP) and the parent’s stated child care need to complete the authorization assessment.

If an authorization-related agency error occurs, an overpayment must not be established but the authorization must be corrected.

This section last updated 11/1/2024

Section 16.1.1 Authorization Hours Parents can self-declare their child care need for all approved activities. Parents can also self-declare whether they meet the policies for education hours to be included in the authorized hours when a child is in Head Start or 4K (see 16.1.1.3). For parent education, the schedule for classes with set log in times is collected as part of approved activity verification (see 7.8) to determine alignment with the self-declared child care need (see 16.1.1.1) but the schedule does not need to be entered in CSAW or case comments.

Child care need includes any time the child is at the child care provider related to the parent’s approved activity, including sleep hours for the parent (see 16.1.1.2), gap time (see 16.1.1.5), travel time (see 16.1.1.6), etc. These times must be included in the total hours when entering the Approved Hours in CSAW.

Note: Approved activity verification (i.e., class schedule, W-2 Employability Plan (EP), paystubs, etc.) is collected during the eligibility determination process (see 7.8). Agency workers may view the Electronic Case File (ECF) for scanned documents.

If the parent does not know their child care need for new employment with a varying or on-call schedule, the agency worker should write the authorization based on the parent’s best estimate. Authorizations must still be written for the longest period possible (see 15.3).

If the parent has on-call employment, the authorized hours must only include hours when the parent actually works and not include hours when the parent is waiting to be called. If the parent has a varying schedule or travel time need, the child is eligible to receive the highest weekly hours within a month for which the parent needs child care (see 16.1).

Example 1 (Varying schedule): Daniel has the following work schedule: 20 hours in Week One (1), 45 hours in Week Two (2), 25 hours in Week Three (3), and 15 hours in Week Four (4). The agency worker enters 45 hours as the authorized hours in CSAW.