Transforming Child Care Licensing in Illinois: Alleviating Provider Concerns

Although Start Early agrees some of these components are important, others will likely have a limited impact toward addressing issues that child care educators face every day and we have shared out thoughts about additional actions the state can take to begin addressing them. For example, this legislation does not address the root causes of background check delays, which have plagued programs for several years. Directors of child care centers are consistently having to wait 30 days or longer for the DCFS Background Check Unit to process background checks and issue clearance letters. At a time when centers cannot keep classrooms open due to a lack of staff, we encourage IDEC to take a closer look at the internal processes within the Background Check Unit that are causing these unnecessary delays and design an online portal to streamline processing.

Second, communication issues with day care licensing representatives (DCLRs) are another significant challenge for our early education providers. DCLRs oftentimes have outdated information they are sharing with providers or have different levels of knowledge regarding licensing rules, leading to erroneous licensing violations. Incorrect licensing violations can be difficult to remove from the provider’s public record, causing unnecessary harm. DCLR training and support should be a top priority, as this issue was consistently raised during the listening sessions held by IDEC last fall.

In the coming months, we ask IDEC to direct energy toward meaningfully addressing the primary pain points that child care providers have stated they face daily. Solving these pain points will begin to help our child care educators feel relief and create the space to engage in meaningful conversations at a statewide level to overhaul our child care licensing system.