Add Arizona Child Care Assistance Program

[hua7450]

Summary

Fixes #8370.

Adds Arizona's Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), including:

• Eligibility for Arizona families with an eligible child under age 13 who is a citizen or qualified noncitizen (CCDF, 45 CFR 98.20).
• Initial and ongoing income eligibility using the DES FFY 2026 fee schedule.
• az_ccap_enrolled to apply ongoing/redetermination eligibility through 85% SMI.
• DES daily copays by fee level, with formula-based copay exemptions for employed Cash Assistance families, protective services, and foster care pathways.
• A without-regard-to-income (categorical) eligibility pathway for the same families (R6-5-4914(A)).
• DES reimbursement rates by provider type, child age group, quality status, formula-derived special-needs child status, and school-age season.
• Monthly subsidy calculation as max(0, min(pre-subsidy childcare expenses, state maximum reimbursement) - copay).

Regulatory Authority

• Arizona DES child care assistance eligibility page.
• DES CCA-0229A, Child Care Assistance Gross Monthly Income Eligibility Chart and Fee Schedule FFY 2026.
• DES CCA-1227A, Maximum Reimbursement Rates for Child Care, effective November 1, 2025.
• Arizona Administrative Code Title 6, Chapter 5, Article 49.
• DES Child Care Provider Registration Agreement CCA-1210B for special-needs definition and enhanced-rate criteria.

Income Eligibility Tests

• Non-enrolled applicants use fee levels L1-L6, corresponding to the initial 165% FPL limit.
• Enrolled recipients use az_ccap_enrolled and may qualify through fee level L7, corresponding to the ongoing 85% SMI limit.
• Family sizes 1-12 use the DES FFY 2026 monthly gross income thresholds.

Eligible Activity

• Employment (full or part-time) qualifies under R6-5-4912(A)(1).
• Education and training qualify an adult only when paired with an average of at least 20 hours/week of work (R6-5-4912(A)(3)); education alone qualifies only teen parents — a parent under the teen_parent_age_limit (20) attending secondary school (R6-5-4912(A)(4)).
• Inability to provide care (is_disabled) qualifies.
• CPS-referred and CPS/DDD foster cases satisfy the activity-or-need requirement without an employment activity, because the case plan is itself an eligible need (R6-5-4912(A)(9)).
• Activity employment checks read pre-labor-supply-response hours (weekly_hours_worked_before_lsr) so a reform's behavioral hours change does not feed back into eligibility.

Income Deductions And Exemptions

• Countable income uses PolicyEngine income variables matching R6-5-4914(F) countable income categories, including SSI, railroad retirement, general assistance, recurring cash gifts, and gambling/lottery proceeds.
• A minor student's earnings (wages and self-employment, including SSTB and farm) are excluded (R6-5-4914(G)(13)); lump-sum capital gains from property sales are excluded (R6-5-4914(G)(3)).
• Child support paid for dependents residing outside the household is deducted (R6-5-4914(H)).
• Countable income is rounded down to the whole dollar (R6-5-4914(I)).

Standards And Benefit Calculation

• Copay is a daily per-child amount by fee level and attendance days.
• az_ccap_categorically_eligible (used for both the income-test bypass and the copay exemption) is formula-based from is_tanf_enrolled combined with an employed head/spouse, receives_or_needs_protective_services, and is_in_foster_care.
• az_ccap_special_needs_child is formula-based from eligible child status and is_disabled; the enhanced special-needs rate additionally requires a quality-enhanced (3-5 star / accredited) provider per CCA-1210B.
• Reimbursement uses provider type, child age group, school-age season, quality enhanced rate (+40%), and the flat special-needs rate.

Requirements Coverage

• Covered: Arizona residence, child age, citizenship/qualified-noncitizen status, activity (with the adult education work requirement), initial and ongoing income limits, countable income sources and deductions, family-size thresholds, fee levels, daily copays, formula-based copay exemptions, the categorical without-regard-to-income pathway, provider/age/season rates, quality rate, formula-based special-needs rate, final subsidy formula, and CCDF/state-benefit aggregation.
• Out of scope by user decision: the CDA-only (+35%) enhanced rate and the TCC no-copay-beyond-third-child rule.
• Not modeled: waiting lists, verification workflow, provider contract status, nonpayment sanctions, overpayments, appeals, exact administrative notices, time limits, and the Jobs/rehabilitation/court-ordered/shelter activity pathways (employment, education, and inability-to-care are modeled).

Modeling Limitations And Future Work

• Historical backdating. Only the FFY 2026 schedule is modeled (income/fee effective 2025-10-01, rates effective 2025-11-01). As with the other state CCAP implementations, earlier periods back-extrapolate these values rather than using period-correct historical rates, so simulations before late 2025 are approximate. This program may need historical rate/threshold backdating in the future.

Files

Parameters and variables are organized into reimbursement/ (rates, age groups, school-age season), copay/, eligibility/, and income/ subfolders.

• policyengine_us/parameters/gov/states/az/hhs/ccap/{reimbursement,copay,eligibility,income}/...
• policyengine_us/variables/gov/states/az/hhs/ccap/{az_ccap.py, az_ccap_enrolled.py, reimbursement/, copay/, eligibility/, income/}
• policyengine_us/variables/gov/states/az/hhs/az_child_care_subsidies.py
• policyengine_us/tests/policy/baseline/gov/states/az/hhs/ccap/...
• policyengine_us/programs.yaml (CCDF state implementation registration)
• changelog.d/8370.added.md

Validation

• policyengine-core test policyengine_us/tests/policy/baseline/gov/states/az/hhs/ccap -c policyengine_us
• make format

Known failing tests: none.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 100.00%. Comparing base (5c8b2a9) to head (7809118).
⚠️ Report is 2 commits behind head on main.

Additional details and impacted files

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  Coverage   100.00%   100.00%           
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  Files           15        19    +4     
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+ Hits           255       272   +17     

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[MaxGhenis]

Holding this one back from the current CCAP merge batch (KS/IA/IN/HI/FL/ID/KY are all merged) pending a source check on a single value.

In az_ccap_daily_rate / reimbursement/rates/special_needs.yaml, the special-needs rate is $89.81, applied as a flat rate that overrides the age/provider/quality rate for any special-needs child at a quality provider. That figure appears to equal the quality-enhanced infant center rate ($64.15 base × 1.4 quality multiplier = $89.81) rather than a distinct all-ages special-needs rate. If so, a special-needs preschool/school-age child at a quality provider would receive $89.81/day instead of their (lower) age-appropriate quality-enhanced rate, overstating the benefit.

Could you confirm against CCA-1227A (page 1) whether a standalone special-needs rate row actually exists? If $89.81 is really the infant quality rate, the special-needs branch should select the age-appropriate quality rate rather than apply a flat override. Everything else verified cleanly against the cited sources — happy to merge as soon as this is confirmed or adjusted.

[hua7450]

Thanks for catching this and holding it back — good instinct to double-check the value.

I verified against CCA-1227A, and there is a standalone Special Needs Rates row at the bottom of the rate table:

Special Needs Rates — Birth through 12-year-old · Daily Rate · All Districts: $89.81

So $89.81 is a genuine published flat rate for special-needs children of any age (birth–12), not the infant-center quality cell. The match to the infant quality rate ($64.15 × 1.4 = $89.81) is coincidental — on the prior Aug 1, 2024 sheet the Special Needs Rate was $96.23, which likewise equals that sheet's infant quality rate (×1.5, before AZ dropped the multiplier to 1.4). Both sheets list it as its own all-ages row.

Per CCA-1210B item 14, the special-needs enhanced rate applies at providers with a 3–5 star Quality First rating or national accreditation — exactly the special_needs & quality gate in az_ccap_daily_rate. So a special-needs preschool/school-age child at a quality provider does receive the flat $89.81 by design, and the implementation is correct as written.

Source: https://des.az.gov/sites/default/files/dl/CCA-1227A.pdf#page=1 (Special Needs Rates section, bottom of the table)

Separately, I broadened the az_ccap_special_needs_child definition to also recognize children with an IEP or a documented developmental delay (not just the generic is_disabled flag), matching the IFSP/IEP/ISP/504 pathways in CCA-1210B item 14 — pushed in the latest commit.

Let me know if you'd like anything else before merging.

[PavelMakarchuk]

Program Review — Arizona Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP)

Automated multi-agent review (regulatory, references, code patterns, test coverage, and source-value audits of income/copay + the provider-rate matrix).

Strong, well-structured implementation — 100 CCAP + 11 param/system tests pass, microsim runs clean, mechanisms (the +40% quality multiplier, flat special-needs rate, enrolled-vs-applicant two-tier, categorical bypass) all correctly reflect AZ CCA rules, and all 84 income-threshold cells + copays + base rates match CCA-0229A FFY2026. Requesting changes on a few items below — none are value errors.

✅ Cleared (not errors) — flagging so they aren't re-litigated

quality_multiplier = 1.4 and special_needs = $89.81 are correct for FFY2026. AZ reduced the Quality First enhancement to 40% effective 2025-11-01 ($64.15 × 1.4 = $89.81). The 50% / $96.23 figures are from the prior FFY2025 (08/24) sheet — the live FFY2026 rates confirm the PR's values.

Should address

1. Hard-coded age < 18 in policyengine_us/variables/gov/states/az/hhs/ccap/income/az_ccap_countable_income.py (~line 30) — this is a policy threshold (minor-student earnings exclusion, R6-5-4914(G)(13)); move it to a parameter. It's the only genuine hard-coded value in the PR.
2. Reimbursement-rate citations point to the stale Aug-2024 edition. The 11 reimbursement/ params are dated 2025-11-01 and their values are the FFY2026 rates, but the reference hrefs cite the "08/24" CCA-1227A. Re-cite to the FFY2026 edition so the source matches the effective date (values are correct; only the cited edition is wrong).
3. Test coverage pins: add the level-7 fee-level upper boundary (== threshold → 7, +1 → 0); a level-2 ($1/day) copay case + a multi-child case with differing attendance days; a max_family_size clamp case; and at least one non-center provider summer-rate case.
4. Confirm the special-needs & quality gate. The flat $89.81 special-needs rate is applied only when the provider is quality-enhanced; CCA-1227A lists Special Needs as a flat all-districts rate without an explicit star precondition — please confirm the gate is intended.

Suggestions

• Rename the changelog fragment changelog.d/8370.added.md → 8373.added.md (or az-ccap.added.md) — it's named for the issue, not this PR.
• The +35% CDA-credentialed certified-family tier isn't modeled (a CDA-only provider without a star rating is under-reimbursed) — worth a documented note.
• az_ccap_enrolled defaults False, so the level-7 (85% SMI) continued-eligibility tier is unreachable population-wide in microsim — document or impute as future work.
• Cosmetic: 48.70 → 48.7 in reimbursement/rates/center.yaml; tighten the teen_parent_age_limit.yaml description; the countable_income/sources.yaml excluded-income anchor is p.32 (not p.31).

Cleared / verified

All income/copay/eligibility values match source; no 7% copay cap needed (AZ's fixed daily-fee schedule is its 45 CFR 98.45 sliding scale); enums complete (no dead lookups); reuses the shared federal is_ccdf_asset_eligible / is_ccdf_immigration_eligible_child; no shared CCDF code modified.

🤖 Multi-agent review via /review-program