Minnesota child care providers face Jan. 9 deadline or lose funding

Minnesota officials must provide information about child care providers and parents who receive federal funding or risk losing federal child care funding by next week, according to a notice sent to providers.

The Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families (DCYF) notified child care providers in an email Friday that information about funding recipients must be sent to the federal government by Jan. 9, the Associated Press reported.

The notice comes after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said Tuesday it would freeze all child care payments to Minnesota following allegations of fraud involving some child care centers.

“We recognize the alarm and questions this raises,” DCYF said in the email. “We learned about the freezing of funds at the same time as everyone else on social media.”

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DCYF instructed providers and families relying on frozen funds to continue the program’s “licensing and certification requirements and practices as usual.” The email does not specify whether recipients need to take any action or provide any information.

The state agency said it “did not receive formal communication from the federal government until late Tuesday night” after DHS announced it would freeze all child care payments to Minnesota.

All states must provide additional verification before receiving more child care funding.

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Nick Shirley disrupted the news cycle last week with a 42-minute video investigating Minnesota nurseries that are inactive despite receiving millions of dollars in government funding. (Nick Shirley)

On Friday, DCYF said the state Office of Inspector General was conducting on-site compliance checks at nine child care centers referenced in a viral video this week by independent journalist Nick Shirley accusing them of fraud.

In her video, Shirley visited several Minnesota child care facilities, including the Center for Quality Learning in Minneapolis, which she said was inactive despite receiving child care assistance funding from the state.

According to DYCF, inspectors found that the centers were operating “as expected” and that children were present in all centers except for one centre, which was said not yet to be open to families at the time of the visit.

The department said there are ongoing investigations at four centers and 55 open investigations into providers receiving funding through the Child Care Assistance Program.

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Children sleep at bedtime at Minnesota Children’s Care in Minneapolis, Minn., on Dec. 30. (Renee Jones Schneider/Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images)

Minnesota DCYF Commissioner Tikki Brown said at a press conference Monday that previous inspections of the centers had not revealed fraud and noted that regulators made unannounced visits in response to concerns raised by the video.

“We are aware of a video circulating about child care centers in Minnesota that has received local and national attention,” Brown said. “While we have questions about some of the methods used in the video, we take the concerns raised by the video about fraud very seriously.”

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Fox News Digital has reached out to the Minnesota Department of Children, Youth and Families for comment.

Fox News Digital’s Greg Wehner, Louis Casiano and The Associated Press contributed to this report.