BILL ANALYSIS
SENATE HUMAN
SERVICES COMMITTEE
Senator Carol Liu, Chair
BILL NO: AB 222
A
AUTHOR: Adams
B
VERSION: As Proposed to be amended
HEARING DATE: August 30, 2010
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FISCAL: Yes
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CONSULTANT:
Hailey
SUBJECT
Child care
SUMMARY
Fixes two problems facing ancillary day care centers since
the passage of new legislation requiring a criminal records
clearance for each employee by January 1, 2011 (SB 702,
DeSaulnier; Chapter 199, Statutes of 2009).
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.
4. 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.
5. Requires that the employees of ancillary day care
centers be on the trustline registry by January 1, 2011.
This bill :
1. Establishes a fee of $35 - for each application -- to
cover DSS's costs and permits the department to adjust that
fee annually to reflect changes in the consumer price
index.
2. Clarifies that the requirement to obtain a criminal
records clearance applies to persons who are 18 years of
age or older, thus permitting ancillary day care centers to
hire persons who are not yet 18 years of age.
3. Provides that a person whose trustline application is
denied or revoked can not be employed in an ancillary day
care center.
4. Allows an employee who has applied for trustline
registration before January 1, 2011, to continue to work
past that date until DSS has denied his or her trustline
application and any right to appeal that denial has been
exhausted or has expired.
5. Adds an urgency clause.
FISCAL IMPACT
Unknown; none expected.
BACKGROUND AND DISCUSSION
Need for the bill
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Several fitness centers have brought to the author's
attention that as of January 1, 2011, they will no longer
be able to hire teenagers who are not yet adults to work in
their on-site child care centers. These teens make up a
large part of this workforce. The author believes that it
was not the intent of the original legislation - SB 702 of
2009 - to exclude minors from working in these centers.
However, as written the new law does require a trustline
registration of every employee at an ancillary day care
center, and only adults can register for trustline.
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
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 (if 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
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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.
This bill adds a $35 fee to defray the costs of DSS to
process an application for registration in trustline.
Related legislation
As noted above, SB 702 (DeSaulnier; Chapter 199, Statutes
of 2009) establishes the requirement that ancillary day
care centers hire only persons who registered with
trustline, meaning that they have undergone a criminal
records clearance authorized by the State Department of
Social Services.
AB 507 (2005, Daucher) proposed that employees and
volunteers at the child care centers operated within health
studios be subject to a criminal records check. This bill
failed passage in the Senate Public Safety Committee.
Previous votes :
AB 222: Not applicable; this is a new bill.
SB 702: Senate Human Services, April, 2009: 5-0.
POSITIONS
Support: 24-Hour Fitness
International Health, Racquet, and
Sportsclub Association
Oppose: None received
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