Introduction
Research Questions
- What are frontline licensing staff’s qualifications, responsibilities, training, and caseloads?
- What methods do CCEE licensing agencies use to monitor CCEE licensing regulations?
- What actions do CCEE licensing agencies use to enforce CCEE licensing regulations?
- How do CCEE licensing agencies manage complaints made about CCEE providers?
Child care and early education (CCEE) licensing systems establish regulations that must be met to legally operate a child care program. Licensing systems also monitor and enforce these regulations. This collection of short resources from The Role of Licensing in Early Care and Education (TRLECE) project highlights characteristics of frontline licensing staff roles and approaches to implementing some licensing functions. The resources cover these topics:
Purpose
The purpose of this collection of briefs is to highlight how states approach different components of CCEE licensing.
Key Findings and Highlights
- In 2017, 77% of states required frontline licensing staff to have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
- In 2017, 33% of states reported using a history of compliance with licensing regulations to determine the frequency of monitoring inspections.
- In 2017, 87% of states revoked a license at least once as an enforcement action.
- The most common complaints about licensed CCEE providers in 2017 were about not following regulations for supervision, ratio and group size, and health and safety.
Methods
Most of the findings presented in these publications are based on Child Trends’ analysis of the 2017 Child Care Licensing Study (CCLS; Fischer & Orlowski, 2020), with a few drawn from analysis of the 2019 Quality Progress Report (QPR; Office of Child Care, 2019) data. The CCLS analysis was limited to data gathered from all 50 states and DC; the QPR data were from all 56 states and territories. The data presented in these publications may not represent current CCEE licensing practices because practices may have changed since the data were collected.
Glossary
- Enforcement:
- Actions that child care and early education licensing agencies use to address licensing violations. These may include fines, revocation of license, or probation.
- Monitoring:
- Processes established to ensure that licensed child care and early education providers comply with licensing regulations. Monitoring practices may include on-site inspections and review of documents.
- Frontline licensing staff:
- Individuals who routinely conduct licensing inspections of licensed child care programs. They may have other responsibilities as well, as long as one of their jobs is to routinely conduct licensing inspections.
Files
- PDF Child Care and Early Education Frontline Licensing Staff Snapshot (277.92 KB)
- PDF Monitoring Practices Used in Child Care and Early Education Licensing (4,144.63 KB)
- PDF Enforcement Actions Used in Child Care and Early Education Licensing (3,324.12 KB)
- PDF Approaches to Managing Complaints in Child Care and Early Education Licensing (1,647.97 KB)