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Child Care Provider Background Checks

Nearly 12 million children under age 5 are in some type of child care setting every week. On average, children of working mothers are spending 36 hours a week in the care of someone other than a parent.

Parents want their children to be safe in child care. Most parents assume that states have conducted a background check on providers - particularly for providers of licensed and government subsidized care. However, background check requirements vary greatly by state and the reality is that most states do not conduct a complete background check on child care providers. 21 states do not conduct fingerprint checks and 43 states do not check the sex offender registry for child care center staff 24 states do not do fingerprint check for FCC providers. Parents simply can't know if a provider has a violent criminal history unless a thorough background check is completed.

The best way to ensure the safety of children is for child care providers to undergo a thorough background check, including looking at the criminal history, child abuse and neglect registries, state and federal fingerprint checks and the sex offender registries.

Whether children receive a subsidy or not, parents need to know that their children are safe in child care - that their child care provider does not have a history of sexual offenses or child abuse or other violent crimes. At a minimum, federal funds should not be used to pay for care provided by a convicted felon. The fix is easy. Federal and state policy should support safe child care for children.

Recommendations

• Prohibit the use of Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds to pay providers who are convicted felons.
• Require all paid providers caring for unrelated children on a regular basis to have a complete background check and to have a state license or permit, so that all providers caring for unrelated children are on a state's radar screen.
• Require states to subject all paid providers caring for unrelated children on a regular basis to undergo a background check that includes a federal and state fingerprint check, as well as a check of the child abuse registry and sex offender registries. A list of cleared providers should be made publicly available on the internet so that parents can easily ascertain a provider's status. Child care is all about parent choice, but parents need to know whether the care they are choosing is safe.
• Reauthorize CCDBG in the 110th Congress, and increase the quality set-aside from 4 percent to 10 percent. States would be able to use this additional quality funding to conduct necessary background checks.

States need not wait for Congress to enact standards that will protect children. Governors and state legislators can initiate safe policies and add their state to the undersized list of four (DC, IL, MI and NV) that already conduct complete background checks, as well as enforce the rules already in place. Because only 4 states including the District of Columbia conduct complete background checks on providers, Congress should condition child care funding on a state's plan to ensure background checks are complete.

Click here to see how your state stacks up.