BILL ANALYSIS Ó
SENATE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
Senator Ricardo Lara, Chair
2015 - 2016 Regular Session
SB 1420 (Mendoza) - Child care and development: occupational
health and safety training
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|Version: March 28, 2016 |Policy Vote: ED. 7 - 2, HEALTH |
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|Urgency: No |Mandate: No |
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|Hearing Date: May 16, 2016 |Consultant: Jillian Kissee |
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This bill meets the criteria for referral to the Suspense File.
Bill Summary: This bill requires all child care caregivers, as
specified, to complete a one-time training on occupational
health and safety risks specific to the child care profession
and on how to identify and avoid those risks. This bill
requires the California Department of Education (CDE) to develop
the curriculum for the training in consultation with the State
Department of Public Health (DPH) and child care caregivers, and
also compensate caregivers for attending the training. Finally,
this bill requires the CDE to provide lists of caregivers that
have attended and have yet to attend training with their contact
information to the entity contracted to provide the training on
a monthly basis.
Fiscal Summary:
Training Costs: Actual costs of this bill will depend on
a number of factors, including the actual number of
caregivers that will need to be trained and the number of
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new caregivers entering the childcare workforce. There
will be one-time and ongoing costs to train all existing
and new caregivers as well as ongoing costs to provide
periodic updates on health and safety matters to those who
have completed training. Assuming 70,000 existing
caregivers, one-time training costs would be about $12
million. However, actual costs could be significantly
higher since this estimate does not include administrators
which are required to be trained pursuant to this bill.
Costs include providing compensation for training time and
travel costs, curriculum development, translation of
training materials, providing training materials,
delivering the training, and administrative costs for the
contracted training entity. Ongoing costs could
potentially be in millions to train new caregivers entering
the workforce. (General Fund)
CDE costs: Approximately $120,000 ongoing to oversee the
development of the training, monitor the contract with the
contracted training entity, and consult with the DPH.
(General Fund)
The DPH notes minimal costs to provide consultation on
the training curriculum.
Background: Existing state law establishes the Child Care and
Development Services Act to provide child care and development
services as part of a coordinated, comprehensive, and
cost-effective system serving children from birth to 13 years
old and their parents, including a full range of supervision,
health, and other support services through full- and part-time
programs. (Education Code Section 8200, et seq.)
Existing state law also establishes the California Child Day
Care Facilities Act to provide for the licensure and regulation
of family day care homes by the State Department of Social
Services and encourages the development of licensing staff with
knowledge and understanding of children and child care needs.
(Health and Safety Code Section 1596.73)
The federal Child Care and Development Block Grant was
reauthorized in 2014 and includes numerous policy changes. The
authorization requires the state plan to include professional
development and training regarding improving the knowledge and
skills of the child care workforce to be developed in
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consultation with the State Advisory Council on Early Childhood
Education and Care.
The authorization requires the state to determine minimum health
and safety training to be completed pre-service or during an
orientation period in addition to ongoing training. The State
Department of Social Services establishes training requirements
for child care personnel. Currently this includes 15 hours of
health and safety training, including, among other things, the
prevention of childhood injuries and infectious diseases, with
no requirement for ongoing training. License-exempt providers
who receive Child Care and Development Fund subsidy, a component
of the block grant, are not required to participate in training.
Proposed Law: Beginning July 1, 2017, this bill requires a
caregiver to attend a one-time, two hour training on
occupational health and safety risks specific to the child care
profession and to be compensated for attending this training. A
caregiver is required to complete this training within two years
of when the training is first offered pursuant to this bill, or
within three months of the caregiver beginning to care for
children in a licensed child day care facility, whichever occurs
later. Caregivers are defined as licensed caregivers and
license-exempt caregivers. Licensed caregivers are defined as a
person who works directly with children and is a child care
provider, an administrator, or an employee of a licensed child
day care facility. License-exempt caregiver means a person who
works directly with children under a publicly funded child care
program, and is a child care provider who is exempt from
licensing requirements, as specified, or the employee of such a
child care provider, but excludes caregivers who are the
relatives of the children they care for.
The training is required to include certain components, such as
a discussion of various risks and how they can be identified and
minimized including chemical and biological hazards, infectious
disease, and physical hazards and stress. In addition, the
training must include presentations by associations or
organizations of child care caregivers about their professional
development offerings for caregivers, upon approval by the CDE.
The CDE is required to develop the curriculum for the training
in consultation with the State Department of Public Health and
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child care providers. CDE is required to contract with an
entity to provide this training throughout the state that meets
certain requirements.
This bill also requires the CDE to provide lists of the
caregivers, with their contact information, who have attended
the training and of those who have yet attended the training, to
the entity selected to provide the training on a monthly basis.
This bill specifies that the purpose of this requirement is to
enable the entity to provide periodic updates to affected
caregivers on health and safety issues and other educational
information. This bill requires the CDE and the entity
providing the training to provide the same type of training
materials in any non-English language spoken by a substantial
number of members of the public whom the CDE services.
Related Legislation: SB 548 (De Leon, 2015), among other things,
required the CDE to ensure that all family child care providers
attend in-person orientation training, as specified, and for the
CDE and the State Department of Social Services to make
information regarding family child care providers available to
provider organizations, as specified. SB 548 was vetoed by the
Governor, whose message stated in part, that the bill
prematurely anticipated what will be necessary to comply with
the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 2014.
Staff Comments: The bill's findings and declarations state that
its required occupational health and safety training will
satisfy several of the new federal Child Care and Development
Block Grant health and safety requirements. The reauthorized
block grant requires states to establish health and safety
standards in 10 topic areas and requires training and
professional development provided to include these standards.
Though some of the topics required to be included in this bill
relate to some of the federally-required topics, this bill's
focus is minimizing risks in the workplace. Federal law
requires states to have health and safety requirements designed
to protect the health and safety of children. Because of this
misalignment, it is unlikely that the federal Child Care and
Development Block Grant is a viable funding source to implement
the training required by this bill.
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