New Federal Regulations

05/24/2013

Students who are loved at home come to school to learn, and students who aren’t, come to school to be loved.
Nicholas A. Ferroni

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently proposed new regulations to strengthen standards to better promote the health, safety, and school readiness of children in federally-funded child care. The proposed rules would only apply directly to child care providers who accept Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) money. More than 500,000 providers serve about 1.6 million low-income children through CCDF. Many more children would be impacted, however, because most of the providers also serve non-CCDF children.

Under the proposed rule, states would require that all CCDF-funded child care providers:

receive health and safety trainings in specific areas.
comply with applicable state and local fire, health, and building codes.
receive comprehensive background checks (including fingerprinting).
receive unscheduled on-site monitoring.

These proposed regulations are currently under review. Those interested in providing feedback can submit comments until August 5, 2013.

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