New North Carolina Law Requires All Childcare Workers to Have Background Checks

The surprising thing about the new law passed in North Carolina this last week was not that all childcare workers are required to undergo a criminal background check, but that not all of them were required before the law was passed. According to the old law, only some daycares were required to have criminal background checks, and practically no out-of-home childcare services were required to have checks done. One question that was asked by many people when the law was passed was “why now?” It does seem pretty odd that it’s only now that people working closely with children should be required to pass a criminal background check before they are entrusted with people’s children.

Unfortunately, the childcare industry can be far from safe, and many offenders have been involved with childcare when they were clearly unfit for the job. Many times, these offenders can be found out with a simple background check, but people either don’t take the time to make people fill one out, or like North Carolina, there simply wasn’t a law in place that required it. The new law passed on the 1^st will not only require daycare workers to have background checks, but it will also require volunteers, temporary workers, and people who watch children from their homes to go through the background check process. The law wasn’t clear on whether or not the daycare workers and childcare providers would also be required to pass a drug test, but drug tests are often part of a criminal background check, especially if a person is found to have a history of drug use.

Children can spend a large portion of their day at a daycare center or in someone’s home daycare service, so it’s very important for parents to know that the people they hire are qualified to watch over children. Other states, like Connecticut, have found that many employees who have undergone background checks were recently found to be unsuitable for working with children. They were found in some cases to have improper licensing or flags in their background checks that made them a hazard for children to be around. It’s not just North Carolina that is becoming more concerned about the quality of child care either, but has the concern come too late? Many children have already suffered at the hands of offenders through child care. States everywhere have been passing the same laws as North Carolina and Connecticut. Even if they can’t change the past, they can start a new, safer trend for the future.

Companies like backgroundchecks.com provide comprehensive background searches that employ a nationwide criminal database. The service used to search the database is called US OneSearch and it uses information from 49 different states as well as Washington DC, Guam, and Puerto Rico. Other useful services include US AliasSearch, which uses the same comprehensive nationwide criminal database as US OneSearch, but also searches for known aliases and maiden names. It uses a SSN and date of birth to access this information. If you’re going to take measures to protect your children from unsuitable childcare provides, then make sure you know that the person caring for children is who they say they are and that they have a reliable and clean background check. Don’t wait for background checks to be required in your state, ask if your childcare provider’s employees are required to have them or not.

About backgroundchecks.com -

backgroundchecks.com - a founding member of the National Association of Professional Background Screeners (NAPBS®) and cofounder of the Expungement Clearinghouse - serves thousands of customers nationwide, from small businesses to Fortune 100 companies by providing comprehensive screening services. Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, with an Eastern Operations Center in Chapin, S.C., backgroundchecks.com is home to one of the largest online criminal conviction databases in the industry. For more information about backgroundchecks’ offerings, please visit www.backgroundchecks.com.

Source: http://www.digtriad.com/news/local/article/261460/57/New-Law-Background-Checks-For-Child-Care-Workers

http://www.dariennewsonline.com/local/article/Background-checks-for-day-care-employees-called-4159604.php

Author: Michael Klazema