Georgia Association of Homes and Services for Children   

Criminal Records Checks
Need for Emergency Checks for Child Placing Agencies
Georgia Association of Homes and Services for Children
January 22, 2004 
Proposed Legislation

Background:

During the 1999 Legislative Session, the Legislature passed HB 30 which allowed day care centers and child caring institutions to do criminal records checks through local law enforcement agencies.  This bill opened up the "bottle neck" that was often created when criminal records checks had to be done through the Office of Regulatory Services.   Sometimes criminal records checks take more than six weeks to be completed through the Department of Human Resources.  This delay has caused agencies deny needed services to children or resulted in the lost of valuable personnel. 

It is the experience of child placing agencies that highly motivated foster parents are lost because they can not get criminal records checks done in a timely manner.  When foster parents apply for the placement of children and it takes more than six weeks to get approved to take children, often these altruistic persons will find other avenues to channel their energies.   

It was the intention of the authors of the legislation to make it possible for all "child welfare agencies" to benefit through direct checks. The original legislation provided for only day care centers and group homes to do direct checks.  This restrictive language was changed through an amendment on the floor of the Senate to include all child welfare agencies which includes daycare centers, group homes, child placing agencies and therapeutic agencies.  To the surprise of all those who worked to get passage of this bill, these changes, were not reflected in final code.   

Because of the narrowness of the language in HB30, only day care centers and group homes were covered in the final code. Foster care agencies whether basic child placing agencies or therapeutic agencies can not therefore go through local police departments for emergency criminal records checks.  They must still go through the Office of Regulatory Services for their record checks.    

To correct this problems, Georgia Code sections 49-5-60 through 68 must be modified to allow child placing agencies to do criminal records checks with their local law enforcement agencies. 

We are proposing legislation that will:

• allow child welfare agencies to hire foster parents and other employees based on preliminary records checks done through their local law enforcement agency.

• allow child welare agencies to use local law enforcement agencies to obtain fingerprint checks through the FBI and GCIC

• remove the bottleneck in providing criminal records checks.