California State Auditor Elaine M. Howle released a report late last week detailing questionable and unfair practices by the Community Child Care Council of Santa Clara County (4Cs). 4Cs is the largest non-profit agency that serves as a link between families and child care providers in the County of Santa Clara.
The results of the audit reinforce what 4Cs employees, Child Care Providers, and parents have been saying for years, including how 4Cs:
- Unfairly disrupted and terminated services to some families;
- Terminated a preschool program to seemingly avoid further scrutiny;
- Misused state funds;
- Paid providers late, creating unnecessary financial hardship for them;
- Engaged in questionable management of its employee retirement plans.
The state audit outlines 4Cs’ pattern of inaccurately backdating their Notice of Action forms to families, which allowed them to avoid paying potential penalties for giving parents inadequate time to respond. This practice of backdating Notice of Action forms also created deadlines that the State Auditor called “unreasonable,” and which led to “to certain families having their childcare services terminated unjustly.”
The state audit also identified a pattern of 4Cs not paying their Child Care Providers on time for the services they’ve provided. In some instances, delivery of late payments extended as far as 16 days.
In addition, employees at 4Cs suffered from the organization’s mismanagement of state funds and suspect administration of their retirement plans. The report concludes that the financial advisor responsible for making those questionable recommendations on employee retirement accounts received, “substantial financial commissions,” as a result. It also reveals that 4Cs improperly spent $6,859 in state grant funds to fight the efforts of their employees to form a union and speak out against the organization’s many improprieties.
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