BILL ANALYSIS �
AB 2621
Page 1
Date of Hearing: April 29, 2014
ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON HUMAN SERVICES
Mark Stone, Chair
AB 2621 (Garcia/Olsen) - As Amended: April 21, 2014
SUBJECT : Child day care facilities: licensing reports
SUMMARY : Requires specified information on child day care
facilities to be posted on a quarterly basis on the Department
of Social Services (DSS) Internet Web site. Specifically, this
bill :
1)Requires all inspection reports, consultation reports, lists
of violations, and plans of correction to be open to public
inspection.
2)Requires DSS, on a quarterly basis, to post on its Internet
Web site the following:
a) Inspection reports, consultation reports, lists of
violations, and plans of correction
b) The number and nature of complaints filed against a
facility within each calendar year, including whether a
complaint is undergoing investigation, whether it has been
substantiated or unsubstantiated, and whether it has been
found to be inconclusive.
3)Requires DSS to redact all personally identifiable information
of children and their families, the complainant, and
individuals named in any documents who are not associated with
the facility prior to any information being made available to
the public or being posted to the department's Internet Web
site.
EXISTING LAW
1)Establishes the California Child Care and Development Services
Act (CCDSA) to provide a comprehensive, community-based,
coordinated, and cost-effective system of child care and
development services for children from birth to age 13 with
the purpose of enhancing the social, emotional, physical, and
intellectual development of children. (EDC 8200 and 8201)
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2)States the intent of the Legislature that all families have
access to child care and development services, regardless of
their demographic background, in order to help them attain
financial stability through employment, while maximizing
growth and development of their children, and enhancing their
parenting skills through participation in child care and
development programs. (EDC 8202)
3)Defines child care and development services as care and
services designed to meet a wide variety of needs of children
and their families, while their parents or guardians are
working, in training, seeking employment, incapacitated, or in
need of respite. (EDC 8208(i))
FISCAL EFFECT : Unknown
COMMENTS :
Background on licensed child care : Under current law, any
person who provides organized nonmedical and nonresidential care
for children other than his or her own children that is not
arranged on a voluntary or otherwise uncompensated basis is
required to be licensed under the CCDSA. These types of
facilities are commonly referred to as a Title 22 program due to
their required compliance with Title to Division 2 of Title 22
of the California Code of Regulations (CCR), which implements
the CCDSA and is governed by the Department of Social Services
(DSS), and can include both small and large family day care
homes and commercially based child care centers.
In order for any person to operate a child development program,
the program must first become a licensed provider under Title
22, which establishes general health and safety requirements,
staff to child ratios, and basic provider training
qualifications. Title 22 providers set their own rates and may
voluntarily accept child development subsidy vouchers, along
with statutorily established family fees, provided through the
California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids
(CalWORKs) program or other state-funded child care subsidy
programs.
According to DSS, as of April 1, 2014, there are 47,069 licensed
child care facilities in the state, including licensed family
child care homes, with a licensed capacity to serve almost 1.1
million children.
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Lack of transparency : Under current law, DSS is not required to
operate and post information relating to the status of licensed
child care facilities. However, although DSS currently has
available a searchable database of child care facilities on its
website, it is limited to the name, location, contact
information, type of facility and whether the facility's license
is current or pending. It does not provide information such as
a facility's licensing history, the expertise and certification
of staff, or a facility's complaint history, including whether
the complaint was resolved. In order to acquire additional
information relating to the quality of a facility, a person must
travel to one of DSS' eight regional licensing offices and
request the information in person.
Other than DSS' searchable database, which is limited to general
information of child care facilities, there is currently no
online or other automated system provided by DSS whereby the
public can review or learn more about licensed child care
facilities. This not only limits the public's access to
information about these types of facilities, but also limits
CCLD's internal ability to track patterns of poor care within a
single facility, much less across facilities with the same
licensee. Under current practice, when a licensee undergoes a
licensing inspection or is subject to a complaint investigation,
the information reported by CCLD is maintained in a paper-based
format. This limits CCLD's ability to track licensees over time
and track whether they operate other facilities that should
undergo additional scrutiny.
According to DSS, there are approximately 462 licensing program
analysts responsible for the more than 75,000 licensed community
care facilities, including child care facilities, and the nearly
1.4 million individuals they serve, ranging from the earliest
stages of life to the end of life care. This comes to a ratio
of one licensing analyst per 162 facilities and 3,030
individuals in care.
In response to increased media coverage of incidences that have
occurred in licensed care facilities across the state, DSS is
currently working to provide more robust information about
licensed facilities on its website. It is anticipated that DSS
will be providing an online searchable database where the public
can access up to five years of historical information. This
searchable database is proposed to include the following:
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The name of the facility and its licensee's name and
contact information;
The number of substantiated, unsubstantiated, and
inconclusive complaints filed against the facility,
including complaint severity and whether a complaint
resulted in a citation; and
The number of inspections, complaint investigations, and
general visits the facility has received.
A timeline for the availability of this searchable database has
not been established.
Due to the current statutory requirement that all care
facilities undergo an unannounced licensing inspection visit at
least once every five years, rather than annually as required
prior to 2003, the reliability and relevance of information
included in this database will be limited. Whereas more
information would be available for those facilities that have
recently been inspected or undergone a complaint investigation,
information for a facility that has not had any complaints filed
against it and hasn't undergone a licensing inspection in
several years will be limited to basic demographic information
related to the facility.
Need for the bill : Stating the need for the bill, the authors
write:
For more than seven years, the Department of Social
Services has been pledging to get the records online. In
2006, the department assured the State Auditor that it was
working on it but warned that it needed money to do so.
More than five years later, it told the Auditor that it
planned to use stimulus money to get the job done.
In 2012, the State Auditor gave up on the department,
saying it had no confidence the state would put the records
online. The Department of Social Services ended up getting
$1 million in education stimulus money, but it's being
spent on other things. [The department] said that money
didn't cover the costs for the project. The department
still doesn't have a plan to get the records online.
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[This bill] will make inspector and validated complaint
reports, relating to child care centers available online.
The California Department of Public Health will make
available online substantiated reports so that they are
transparent to the public so that families can make well
informed decisions when selecting a child care facility.
This bill will give parents a complete picture of what the
state knows about child care centers instead of having
records remain stored away in obscure government offices
with difficult to no access.
AB 2621
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REGISTERED SUPPORT / OPPOSITION :
Support
California Alternative Payment Program (CAPPA)
California Child Care Resource and Referral Network (Network)
Children Now
Opposition
None on file.
Analysis Prepared by : Chris Reefe / HUM. S. / (916) 319-2089