This article was initially published by Healthbeat on April 24. Sign up to receive Healthbeat’s free New York City newsletter here.As New York City moves to offer 2,000 free child care seats by September, it falls to the health department to clear background checks for new providers. Concerned by a history of backlogs, the City Council this week held an oversight hearing and heard two proposals seeking to improve the process.“If our city’s goal is universal child care, then we must ensure that the administration of that care, including the background check process, is as streamlined as possible, and that new facilities and employees don’t get held up in red tape,” City Council Health Committee Chair Lynn Schulman said at the Wednesday meeting. “We must also ensure the relevant city agencies have the necessary bandwidth to complete these background checks and screenings in a timely manner. Unfortunately, it appears that DOHMH has struggled to keep up since the implementation of these comprehensive background checks,” she said of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s work to comply with federal requirements updated in 2019.Expanding child care is among Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s priorities, and the city is in the process of issuing contracts to private child care providers who will get city funding to offer the initial 2,000 seats for 2-year-olds this fall. Officials are rolling out the program in five school districts, covering areas in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. Extensive background checks of the providers applying for licenses are required by law. Once a facility is open, the health department conducts unannounced inspections to promote compliance with health and safety mandates. Inspection results are posted on the health department’s website.The permitting and inspections of the child care facilities are perhaps among of the lesser-known duties of the health department.NYC’s new 2-K program will offer free child care 10 hours a day, 260 days a year, Mamdani saysNew York City Council Majority Leader Shaun Abreu proposed a bill Wednesday to no longer require the health department to mandate a background check for a prospective child care provider, employee, or volunteer if they have already had one in the past five years and have been employed by a child care provider for more than 180 consecutive days. A second bill, proposed by Council Member Tiffany Cabán, would require the health department to sooner notify parents and others of child care centers that close because of health hazards. The proposal would also require the health department to post a summary of child care service inspection reports no later than 24 hours after an inspection. The first bill stems from general concerns that the health department has struggled to process background checks in a timely fashion, with some background checks taking up to a year to be processed. In 2019, when new federal requirements were implemented statewide, a backlog of background checks stretched into the tens of thousands, according to a committee report submitted with the bill. Some applicants looked for jobs elsewhere as the process lagged, taking an average of 36 days. The bill highlighted a day care center in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, as an example. The facility could have served up to 170 children but closed its doors in August 2023 because of the lack of approved staff. It was waiting for staff clearance that had been submitted nearly five months earlier. Families with children enrolled in the program were left without child care for two months, while the provider lost over $250,000. Advocates said that such delays were not uncommon.The health department created an online portal in May 2023 to improve background check processing. The agency testified in October 2023 that it had cleared some 5,000 backlogged applications since the portal was launched and whittled the number of applications to 140. “Background checks are a critical safety requirement in most jobs, especially when it comes to safeguarding young children,” Council Member Jennifer Gutierrez, chair of the subcommittee on early childhood education, said Wednesday in prepared remarks. “Yet the current process has felt burdensome rather than an important step in safety. State, federal, and city requirements are layered on top of one another in ways that are not always well coordinated.”Emmy Liss, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Child Care, said the city was planning to work first with existing child care providers as part of the expansion; they already have a license and staffing. “We anticipate there will be some new hiring to support 2-K and 3-K as there always is in the lead-up to the first day of school, but we do not expect a huge rush,” Liss said. “We are continuing to monitor what the staffing patterns will look like with our partners at New York City public schools and with the health department to make sure that we are prepared.”Liss added: “As we prepare for the fall of 2027, when we will be bringing many more 2-K seats online, we’ll be planning ahead with the Department of Health and New York City public schools to ensure that there is sufficient staff capacity for onboarding those providers.”Corinne Schiff, deputy commissioner for environmental health at the health department, said the agency has hired 60 people in recent years who work solely on background clearances. Other improvements include an online portal for providers, new access to a Department of Education fingerprint system, and a policy change allowing staff to move between child care centers within a 5-year renewal period without a full new background check, as long as they notify the health department.The current median processing time is about 30 days, Schiff said, with several hundred applications exceeding the 45-day mark, the deadline as required under federal law. “Do you have plans in terms of lowering those?” Schulman said. “Five hundred is a lot.”Schiff said the department was “continuing to make upgrades to the to the portal.” She pushed back on “backlog” characterization, noting that some background checks require working with agencies out of state.Trenton Daniel is a reporter covering public health in New York for Healthbeat. Contact Trenton at tdaniel@healthbeat.org or on the messaging app Signal at trentondaniel.88.
