Fellowship or Training Grant Childcare Reimbursement

Colleagues,

As you likely know, it is now possible for full-time NIH-funded trainees (appointed on T32, TL1, TU2, or T90 grants) and fellows (on F30, F31, F32 and F33 grants) to receive reimbursement for child-care costs up to $2,500 per budget period. Check your NOA for the current budget period to confirm if such funding has been provided for your grant. Note, reimbursement is NOT available for students/postdocs employed on other types of NIH grants (e.g., R01).

The requirements for obtaining these funds through the related grant are slightly different between fellows (on F30, F31, F32, and F33 grants) and for trainees (appointed on T32, TL1, TU2, or T90 grants) but the reimbursement process for the fellow/trainee to receive up to $2,500 to cover eligible child care costs per budget period is the same. A link to a summary of how this process works plus links to other resources are available on this NIH Childcare Summary of Key Provisions.

If you are administering an eligible grant, here is the process to follow in order for the fellow/trainee to receive this reimbursement:

  1. The department grants administrator deploys the attached Childcare Reimbursement Form to the fellow/trainee. This form is also being posted on the SPA website so will be available there within the next few days. [You should download the form before using it, rather than opening it in Google docs]
  2. The fellow/trainee completes sections 1-5 of this form in order to document their eligibility for this reimbursement and then submits it to the Certified Approver of the related sponsored project.
  3. The Certified Approver verifies that the fellow/trainee has fully completed section 1-5 of the form, completes the “for department use only” section, and then forwards it to the department’s EFS Expense Report preparer. 
  4. The EFS Expense Report preparer processes the reimbursement in EFS including attaching this form to the expense report for audit purposes. Note, reimbursements cannot be processed through ChromeRiver at this time.
  5. Once the expense report has been fully approved within EFS, the fellow/trainee will be notified when the payment will be issued to them.

We will also be sending a similar communication out to all of the PIs on eligible grants so they are aware of this new process as well. You will receive a copy of this communication for your reference when it has been sent to the PIs.

If you have any questions, please contact one of us. Happy reimbursing!

-Pamela and Nicole