Georgia Improves in Family Childcare Regulations According to ...

Home ? Feature Box ? Georgia Improves in Family Childcare Regulations According to New NACCRRA Report

By kclark on March 12, 2012

Georgia is making strides in becoming a state which ensures safe and quality childcare for children who attend family daycare centers.? The National Association of Child Care Resources and Referral Agencies (NACCRRA) has released the results of its 2012 ?Leaving Children to Chance? report, ranking Georgia 11th out of the 50 states in the quality of its regulatory practices for family daycare centers. Georgia?s vast improvement in the rankings from 38th in 2010 is largely attributed to new requirements that all daycare centers be inspected before they are licensed and that new family day care applicants obtain 20 hours of pre-servicing training.

While Georgia has made great progress in improving its regulation of family day care, there are several areas where additional work is needed.? One major area in need of improvement is reducing the child care licensing staff caseload from 120 cases per inspector to 50 cases per inspector.?? Reducing the caseload for the licensing staff will allow for more effective monitoring and protect children from unhealthy and unsafe child care environments.?

Additional areas of what NACCRRA describes as Georgia?s strengths and weakness in quality family daycare are included below. To review the complete report, please click here. For the Georgia summary, click here.

Strengths:

• All family child care homes are inspected twice a year.
• Routine and complaint based inspections are unannounced.
• Child care licensing staff are required to have a bachelor?s degree in early childhood education or related field.
• Inspection and complaint reports are available online.
• Providers are required to have a CDA credential in addition to a high school degree or GED.
• Providers must offer activities addressing all developmental domains.
• Health standards address 10 of 10 basic standards.
• Safety standards address 10 of 10 basic standards.

Weaknesses:

• Child care licensing staff have an average caseload of 120 programs.
• Providers are required to undergo background checks, but these checks are completed without a state fingerprint check and do not require a check of either the sex offender registry or the child abuse registry.
• Providers are required to complete only 20 hours of initial training including CPR and first aid.
• Providers are required to complete only 10 hours of annual training plus CPR and first aid.
• Providers are allowed to care for three infants and toddlers when older children are present.

Tags: Childcare Licensing, Childcare Regulations, Home Daycare Centers

Source: http://georgiavoices.org/latest-news/georgia-improves-in-family-childcare-regulations-according-to-new-naccrra-report?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=georgia-improves-in-family-childcare-regulations-according-to-new-naccrra-report

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