Could children be at risk?

State auditor urges stronger background check laws for day care workers

Could a felon look after your child at day care?

Not likely; but as Connecticut law stands, new hires — before their criminal background checks are completed — can immediately start working with kids at child care centers. Those checks take on average 150 days to complete.

For the past three years, the Auditors of Public Accounts’ annual report to the Connecticut General Assembly has reiterated the same thing: Legislators should consider changing the background check requirement to a pre-certification process for prospective child day care employees.

“I think it’s not asking much to wait five or six weeks,” said John Geragosian, one of Connecticut’s two state auditors. “In other occupations, you have to wait to get a license, so it’s not too much of a burden to make sure folks that are hired for day care have a certification, saying they don’t have any problematic criminal past, especially as it relates to children.”

As the law is written now, the commissioner of the Office of Early Childhood “shall require each prospective employee of a childcare center or group child care home ... to submit to state and national criminal history records checks.”

However, the statute allows prospective employees to start working after submitting the necessary documentation — and before the background checks have been completed.

In fact, some day care workers are employed for several months without a completed background check, potentially creating a risk that children in licensed child care facilities are being cared for by unsuitable individuals, according to the 2016 annual report to the legislature.

Prior statewide single audit testing revealed it takes an average of 150 days to respond to the submitted background checks,

“We found an inability to process background checks in a timely fashion, which meant that in many cases people with potential criminal backgrounds were working with kids,” said Geragosian.

The lack of timely processing could result in individuals with criminal backgrounds working in child care settings for a significant period of time before being fully vetted.

Geragosian said the Office of the Auditors of Public Accounts office has been citing this problem in various ways for several years.

In addition to being mentioned in the Annual Reports to the Connecticut General Assembly, the issue of timeliness in background checks for child care employees has been acknowledged in the Statewide Single Audit reports since 2012, as well as the Department of Public Health audits from 2008 to 2013.

Documentation and safety

The audits attribute one of the causes of the delay to a lack of a unified monitoring and enforcement system capable of ensuring all employees entering Connecticut’s child care system are identified, have received background checks and had follow-up action in legal matters of concern.

The Office of Early Childhood Child Day Care Unit uses several different systems for tracking and documenting its follow-up activities for background checks.

“What’s changed most recently is the ability to use technology to do things much more quickly,” Geragosian said. “We’re hoping the Office of Early Childhood and other state agencies that do background checks can do this much more quickly.”

However, the three types of background checks performed for prospective child care employees are each maintained by a different agency. A child abuse registry check is maintained by the Department of Children and Families, a state/territory criminal background check is performed by the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection and a FBI criminal background check is done by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The OEC also relies on a process that fails “to provide management with real-time feedback of background check activity,” meaning unqualified, potentially dangerous individuals may not be identified in a timely manner, according to the 2016 Statewide Single Audit report.

Geragosian also believes part of this recurrent problem has been the movement of responsibilities from one agency to another.

The Child Day Care Unit was transferred from the Department of Public Health to the Office of Early Childhood on July 1, 2014.

Previous contributing factors included the inability to track pending legal matters identified as part of the background checks and the reliance on prospective employees to self-report any prior convictions, as noted in the 2013 Statewide Singled Audit report when the DPH handled background checks for prospective child care employees.

The audits recommend the OEC should adopt a pre-certification process or licensing process for prospective child care employees.

However, Catherine Ferraro, who runs the New Haven-based child care center Cathy’s Clubhouse, said that while she was surprised to learn how long it takes for background checks to be processed, she understands that employees sometimes need to start work rather quickly.

Ferraro said employers are not always able to wait, especially if the child care centers are smaller and understaffed.

Ana Brown, human resource manager of LULAC Head Start, said their child care center in New Haven attempts to remedy this problem by running their own internal background checks before prospective employees are allowed to start.

Janic Maysonet, the community program manager of LULAC Head Start, said their main priority is the safety of the children.

“We want to employ the correct person, but we also want to make sure that our children are safe and sound,” Maysonet said, adding that a prospective employee could become a liability if they do not perform their due diligence.

Maysonet said while they are willing to go the extra mile, it would be nice to have some form of assistance from the government, as LULAC Head Start allots a portion of its budget to performing its own background checks.

Proposed legislation this year attempted to partially fix the issue by repealing a subsection of the existing law and substituting some of the language.

If the bill had passed during this past legislative session, section 28 of the Substitute for the Governor’s House Bill No. 7035 would have included an addendum stating “[n]o such prospective employee shall have unsupervised access to children in the childcare center or group child care home until such comprehensive background is completed and the Commissioner of Early Childhood permits such prospective employee to work in such childcare center or group childcare home.”

Linda Goodman, thenacting commissioner of the OEC, said in public testimony this year that “[t]he language is responsive to several audits that the Office of Early Childhood have undergone at both the state and federal level” as well as being “aligned with the new federal Child Care Development Fund requirements that all states must implement.”

New language in the bill would also require child care employees to submit a comprehensive background check every five years.

Currently, an employee must submit to a new background check each time he or she changes employment, so an employee or family child care provider could potentially undergo several background checks within a five-year period. However, an employee or family child care provider who remains in the same job or holds the same license for 20 years would never have to undergo another background check, according to Goodman.

Goodman said clarified language is “a positive improvement for employees,” believing “[b]ackground checks are critical to ensuring the health and safety of young children in early childhood settings.”