BILL ANALYSIS
SENATE HUMAN
SERVICES COMMITTEE
Senator Carol Liu, Chair
BILL NO: SB 702
S
AUTHOR: DeSaulnier
B
VERSION: April 20, 2009
HEARING DATE: April 28, 2009
7
FISCAL: To Appropriations
0
2
CONSULTANT:
Hailey
SUBJECT
Ancillary day care centers: employees: trustline providers
SUMMARY
Requires employees at drop-in child care programs, not
otherwise subject to licensure, to be on the state's
trustline registry, which requires a criminal records
clearance.
ABSTRACT
Current law :
1. Establishes health and safety requirements for child
care programs, enforced by the State Department of Social
Services (DSS) through the licensing of community care
facilities.
2. Exempts from licensure various programs for children,
including temporary child care services provided to parents
who are on the premises of the child care program (except
for ski facilities, shopping malls, or department stores).
3. Establishes the trustline registry for persons who are
not employed by licensed child care programs but who need
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or want a criminal records clearance for their employment.
This bill :
1. Defines "ancillary day care centers" as those
associated with athletic clubs, grocery stores, malls,
shops, or other businesses or group of businesses that
provide a day care center, as ancillary to its principal
business activity, to its customers or clients while they
are engaged in shopping for or purchasing goods or services
from that business or group of businesses.
2. Requires that the employees of ancillary day care
centers be on the trustline registry.
FISCAL IMPACT
Unknown
BACKGROUND AND DISCUSSION
Need for the bill
The author believes that parents may be trusting that their
children are safe while in the care of an ancillary (drop
in) child care program. A constituent whose child was
abused while in the care of an ancillary center suggested
this bill to the author.
Department of Social Services data
The State Department of Social Services (DSS) is
responsible for the licensing of 12,000 child care centers
and more than 40,000. The department reports that they
have received no complaints and know of no instances of
abuse or neglect within unregulated centers covered by this
bill.
What is the trustline registry?
There are several kinds of child care arrangements that do
not require a license from DSS. Early in the 1980s, the
Legislature designed a program whereby a parent could
determine if a person in their employ as a child care
provider has a criminal record. Fingerprints and a fee are
provided to the State Department of Justice, which in turn
runs those prints against the state crime data base and the
STAFF ANALYSIS OF SENATE BILL 702 (DeSaulnier) Page
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state's child abuse index. The prints are also provided to
the Federal Bureau of Investigation which runs them through
its national crime data base. Any rap sheet produced in
this process is then forwarded to DSS, which goes through
the records and determines if the individual in question
can be given a clearance for child care employment. That
information (is the person given a clearance or denied a
clearance) is then forwarded to the California Child Care
Resource and Referral Network, which maintains a registry
of persons with a clearance. That registry is called the
trustline registry. The parent is also notified if the
individual is now registered or if that application was
denied.
Over time, this registry has been used for additional
classifications of child care workers who are not working
in facilities that have a license.
If a person does have a criminal record, there are some
crimes that automatically exclude an applicant from being
on the trustline registry. If an applicant is guilty of
crimes of lesser seriousness, DSS has the discretion to
review an appeal and grant registration when certain
conditions are met.
According to the Resource and Referral Network, fees for a
trustline application include
$19 for the FBI clearance
$32 for the State Department of Justice (DOJ) to
run prints through its criminal history system
$15 for DOJ to run prints through the child abuse
central index
$43 for DSS and the Resource and Referral Network
$15 to $25 to process fingerprints at a LiveScan
location
The cost averages about $125 for the entire process. One
purpose of the registry is to enable a person to remain on
the registry as long as there are no subsequent arrests or
convictions. Clearance information is therefore available
to employers over time.
Related legislation
AB 507 (2005, Daucher) proposed that employees and
volunteers at the child care centers operated within health
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studios be subject to a criminal records check. This bill
failed passage in the Senate Public Safety Committee.
QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS
1. Technical amendments
Current law requires child care centers at shopping malls
to be licensed. The word "mall" should be struck from the
definition of "Ancillary day care center" on page 3, line
13 of the bill.
2. Is this bill needed?
There are an unknown number of ancillary child care centers
in California with an unknown number of employees. The
author has received a report that a child was abused in one
of these centers. However, it is unknown when the incident
occurred, if charges were brought, how the case was
disposed, or if the perpetrator had a criminal record such
that this bill would have identified the individual before
employment. Is this a sufficient record of need to justify
the bill's provisions, its costs to drop in centers or
their employees, and the added workload for DSS and the
Department of Justice?
POSITIONS
Support: The Child Abuse Prevention Center
Oppose: None received
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