The Importance of Screening Child Care Providers

Of course, you want your children to be in as safe and nurturing of an environment as possible when you’re not with them. You must be able to trust your child care provider to not only keep your child from harm but provide ways for your child to learn and grow.

The most straightforward way to ensure your child care provider is dependable is to run a comprehensive background check on them. You can supplement with interviews and facility tours, but background checks are an essential foundation for trust.

Each state has its own set of screening requirements for child care providers, but it’s in your best interest to be thorough regardless of your local regulations. No matter where you are, One Source can quickly provide comprehensive screenings for your child care providers.

There are federal laws outlining what screenings child care providers should undergo—these may be applied in any state and can offer a full understanding of who a potential child care provider is. Federal background check requirements for child care workers include:

• A Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) fingerprint check to ensure a child care provider has no history of convictions that may put a child at risk.
• Search of the National Sex Offender Registry.
• Search the criminal registries of every state the provider has lived in the past 5 years (fingerprints are required in the state where the child care provider lives right now).
• Search state sex offender registries of every state the provider has lived in the past 5 years.
• Search child abuse and neglect registries of every state the provider has lived in the past 5 years.

FBI fingerprinting can take a while, but it is a required and thorough search for child care providers. While you’re waiting for the results of fingerprinting, One Source can complete the rest of the screening requirements plus additional checks about the background and education of your child care provider. We also suggest screening or asking about the screenings of those who interact with your child care provider, including:

• All adults living in a home-based child care center.
• All child care center staff members, including directors, teachers, caregivers, bus drivers, janitors, kitchen staff, and administration.
• Every adult volunteering at your child care center who will have unsupervised access to your child.
• Sports, art or dance instructors or any other adult who may have unsupervised access to your child.

It likely doesn’t make sense for you to personally screen each of these people, but you should definitely ask your child care provider if each of these individuals has been screened and if you can see the results. All child care providers must meet screening requirements, whether they are licensed or not. So, you should always be able to screen your child care providers and ask for proof of background checks for everyone who works in their facility.

Above all, you want to keep your children safe, and One Source is here to help you. Our comprehensive background checks are completed in no more than a few days so you can make a confident choice about where to send your child. If you have further questions about background checking child care providers, please reach out to our Client Relations team.