How to conduct a background check for daycare workers and childcare providers

Many parents or young couples work full-time to support the family’s needs, and thus need extra help from daycare providers in tending to the children and giving them fun and educational activities.  Background checks are routinely done on all employees of these establishments as parents want to ensure their kids are safe and left to the care of trustworthy individuals.

Background checks involve tests that can be ordered by the daycare agency or conducted by a third-party office.  According to the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 2014, states must conduct criminal background checks for all staff members at childcare centers even if they don’t perform direct care of children.  If one runs a daycare center and seeks to hire new employees, they should conduct thorough background checks.

The check typically involves a criminal record check.  Know that even private investigators need to conduct record checks on a county or state level, which can be taxing if the daycare worker or childcare provider has lived and rendered the service in different jurisdictions.  Note that some states prohibit state-wide searchers while others require fingerprints to process a search request.  Other checks involve court records, credit reports, and Social Security Number trace, to name a few.

A comprehensive background check involves state criminal and sex offender registries, state child abuse and neglect registry, the FBI-run National Crime Information Center, FBI fingerprint check, and the National Sex Offender Registry.  While staff can start working at a daycare facility while the check is being completed, they should be supervised at all times by an employee who has successfully completed the background check. 

CheckPeople.com believes that everyone has the right to access public records quickly so that they can make more informed choices. The comprehensive background check services covered by CheckPeople includes criminal records, current and previous phone numbers, address histories, sex offender databases, property ownership records, marriage and divorce records, family member lists, bankruptcy and tax lien history, and more. For more articles like this, visit this blog.