Child Care Interstate Background Check (CC-IBaCs) Environmental Scan

Appendix H.3: Interview Guide for FBI CJIS

U.S. Department of Health and Human Service (DHHS) Administration for Children and Families (ACF)

Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE)

Child Care Interstate Background Checks (CC-IBaCs) Environmental Scan

Interview Guide for FBI CJIS Representative

Thank you for agreeing to participate in this interview today. My name is __________. I work for CNA, a research organization based in Arlington, VA. We are working with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Child Care and Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation to find ways to improve the implementation of the interstate background checks on child care workers that are required under the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act of 2014. For this study, we are interviewing a wide range of key people involved in the background check process. ACF will use the data collected through the interviews to support the development of promising solutions to strengthen nationwide implementation of child care background checks as mandated by the CCDBG Act and provide states and territories with additional technical assistance to facilitate implementation. Please note that the sole purpose of this study is to gather data to inform how ACF can better support state and territory agencies.

Before we get started there are a few things I should mention. This is a research project and your participation is voluntary. We expect that the interview will take about 30 minutes to complete. We will summarize your information and use it to produce a final report that will be used for internal planning at the Office of Child Care, but we will not identify or quote any of the specific people interviewed for the report. We aim to summarize findings so that comments cannot be attributed to any specific person.

An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. The OMB number for this information collection is 0970-0356 and the expiration date is 06/30/2021.

Do you have any questions before we start?

With your permission, we would like to record the interview. The recording will be used to help us ensure our notetaking is accurate. The recordings will be accessible only to the project team at CNA, and will not be shared with the Office of Child Care. We will destroy the recordings after the study is complete. Are you okay with us recording our interview today?

1. What is your role at the FBI?

2. I’m interested in finding out what you know about the child care background check requirements. Have you or others at the FBI had any discussions or exchanged information (for example with State CJIS agencies) about the child care background check requirements? If so, please describe it.

3. A component of the child care background check requirements is to make interstate requests for criminal history data in states where the applicant or employee has lived in the past 5 years. States don’t have to make the interstate request to NFF states because they get the same information from the FBI check. So NFF participation is helpful to the child care background check process. Why do you think the majority of states have chosen not to participate in the NFF?

4. What can be done by the Federal government to encourage NFF participation?

5. We’ve heard of the “alternative NFF.” What can you tell me about that?

PROBES: How does it differ from the current NFF program?

What are the advantages for the States?

When is the program likely to be rolled out?

What are your expectations for state take-up?

6. Are there other possible options for improving the ability of States to conduct interstate checks of criminal history data?

7. What could the Federal government do to support the interstate exchange of criminal history data?

8. Are there any other people from other programs or interested agencies that you think we should interview for this study?

3