Wisconsin Department
of Children and Families - Division
of Early Care and Education
Bureau of Child Care Subsidy Administration
Wisconsin Shares Handbook
Travel time is the amount of time the parent needs to travel from the child care location to their approved activity and from the approved activity back to the child care provider location. For sleep hours and online education when the parent logs in from home, travel time includes the time the parent needs to travel from the child care provider to home for sleep or their education activity. Agency workers must enter travel time separately and not include travel time in the parent’s work schedule or the child care need schedule.
Agency workers must ensure that adequate travel time is included in the number of authorized hours and document the rationale for travel time granted in the Travel Time comment box in CSAW.
Any requests of more than two (2) hours of travel time per day must be verified via an Internet map search or a public transportation schedule. Travel time that is two (2) hours or less per day is not required to be verified. Travel time of any amount that is questionable must be verified.
Agency workers are not expected to manually calculate a daily average of a varying travel need and can use the maximum amount of daily travel need.
| Example 1: Marni requests a daily travel time need of one (1) hour each way per day. This is not considered questionable, and the agency worker enters a two (2) hour daily travel need. The agency worker documents in the comment field that this is what Marni requested and that it is not considered questionable. |
| Example 2: Jose requests a daily travel time need that varies from day-to-day. He needs 30 minutes on Monday/Tuesday, and 45 minutes on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. This is not considered questionable, and the agency worker enters the highest travel time need of 45 minutes. The agency worker documents that this is not questionable and that the highest amount of daily travel time was entered. |
| Example 3: Katie requests a daily travel need of one (1) hour. She states she needs 30 minutes to travel from the child care center to work and 30 minutes to travel from work to the child care center. She works 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. and the child care provider’s hours of operation are from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. This request is considered questionable. The agency worker must ask a follow-up question as to why she has this need if she works earlier than when the child care provider opens. Katie clarifies that her mom drops the children off at the child care in the morning and therefore she changes her daily travel need request to 30 minutes for afternoon travel time only. The agency worker documents this in the comments field. |
This section last updated 10/1/2023