Finding Text
Unaccompanied Alien Children – AL #93.676, Activities Allowed/Unallowed, Allowable Costs Condition During our testing of 25 disbursements for the program, we noted one disbursement for which an invoice did not support the amount of reimbursement for insurance premiums. We noted one instance where the expenditure was not a direct expense of the major program. We also noted 3 instances where $200 gift cards were purchased for clothing. These gift cards were not well tracked to ensure they were properly given to foster families and subsequently used for clothing. In one of the gift card instances, items other than clothing were included on the support. On this same gift card, an unspent balance on the gift card was not accounted for. In another of the gift card instances, there was no support for the use of the gift card and the gift card was never assigned to a specific child for clothing. In the third instance, the support for the use of the gift card was for a different retail store and none of the support showed payment being made in the form of a gift card, and therefore the actual use of the gift card is unknown. Criteria All disbursements should be properly supported by adequate documentation, made within program established guidelines. Cause Documented allowance for clothing was not followed in 3 instances tested. Support was for less than actual expenditures for one disbursement tested. One expenditure was not directly related to the major program. Unallowed items were purchased in one disbursement tested. Effect Disbursements that weren’t allowable under the program were made in several instances because amounts were not adequately tracked or for an unallowed item. Additionally, unsupported items could not be verified for allowability due to lack of details as to what was purchased. Questioned Cost Amount $569.65 from the sample tested and projected to be approximately $75,000 of the total expenditures. Perspective Information 5 of 25 items selected for testing. Recommendation We recommend that stronger reviews and oversight is put in place to make sure that allowances for clothing are followed for all children in foster care. Additionally, if the program is going to continue use of gift cards as a means of providing funds for clothing purchases, then receipts for the use of those funds should be received to verify they were spent appropriately and controls over unspent gift cards must be put in place.View of Responsible Officials and Planned Corrective Action enCircle has officially adopted the policy that gift cards provided to foster parents will not be submitted for reimbursement until the receipts are returned by the parents. If they do not spend the entire amount, only the amount spent will be requested for reimbursement and enCircle will cover the difference from non-federal funds. enCircle is also considering other methods of helping parents purchase clothes for foster placements. Further, enCircle has evaluated the use of all allocation methods for expenses that impact federal grants and will be limiting allocations to only clearly explicit expenses to ensure only programmatic costs are billed. Further, enCircle has created a new service code within its Chart of Accounts to track programmatic administration costs separate from overall administration costs.