{ March 15, 2022 }
This post continues the threads of a previous post, The Business Case For Child Development and Care (CDC) Subsidy. In that post, we covered the broader implications of temporary policy and reimbursement changes made by the Michigan Department of Education.
Here we’re looking at a cloud tool (JSCalc.io) we used to develop a custom revenue calculator specifically for family home providers serving children with CDC subsidy. The goal is to show the revenue a home child care, serving up to six children, could make accepting only CDC payments.
Click the screenshot below to access the interactive calculator after our quick tutorial.
Tutorial
The calculator is very simple to use. As shown in the picture above, left side is where you’ll put in information (inputs) whereas the area to the right will summarize the results (outputs). You can leave the additional child questions blank if you do not have more children to enter. If you accidentally enter an additional child please refresh the calculator to re-enter your data.
One reason we built the calculator is because the MDE payment schedule can be daunting. Below is a cropped section of the full-page table published by MDE. If you use our calculator the results will be the same if you use the below table and do the math by hand.
A few thing to keep in mind: this is the “Step One” reimbursement schedule which is valid until April 9, 2022. It’s also possible for you to enter combinations of children and hours of care that are incompatible with child care regulations (e.g., staff to child ratios depending on child ages). For example, full-time care of half a dozen infants by a family home (capacity 6) is not possible due to obvious staffing ratio limitations. When entering possible combinations please keep licensing regulations in mind. You can find them here, on page 8.
We will be updating our blog with modified calculators as the rates change so stay tuned.
Test Case: What is it Worth?
For example, here is a scenario where a home provider has a published 3 Star rating with Great Start to Quality and also cares for two toddlers 81+ hours per week. As you can see, I answered the GSQ question and the age and hours questions for two children (inputs) and our results show a biweekly revenue of $1,485.00 ($742.50 x 2 children) and a monthly revenue of $3,192.75.
Future blog posts will provided updated calculators based on the reimbursement steps defined by MDE as well as calculators for other provider types. Please feel free to reach out for more information.
Try the calculator below!
If the embedded calculator above doesn’t work for you then please see the link below.
