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

Appendix I: Interview Guide for Other State Background Check Programs

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 Other State Background Check Programs

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 in your background check program?

2. What types of occupations or licenses are covered by your background check program?

PROBES: Can you give us the citation for the State law that governs your program?

When was your background check program implemented?

3. Our understanding is that as part of your background check process, you make background check requests to out-of-state agencies. Is that correct?

PROBE: Which out-of-state background checks do you conduct?

• criminal history

• sex offender registry

• child abuse and neglect registry

• other

4. In conducting these out-of-state background checks, have you experienced any challenges in requesting or obtaining responses from other states? Or in understanding the responses that you do receive? [Interviewer: For each challenge identified, ask the respondent to describe the issue and how it affects their ability to conduct out-of-state checks.]

PROBES: Are there challenges related to …

• Identifying the out-of-state agencies that own the data?

• Communicating with the out-of-state agencies that own the data?

• Lack of automation?

• Difficulty with linking automated systems?

• Restrictions on the release of information?

• Payment of fees

• Legislative authority to make out-of-state requests?

• Definitional or reporting differences between states?

• How long it takes to receive responses?

5) Have you considered or undertaken any solutions to address the challenges you have experienced in conducting out-of-state background checks? [Interviewer: Discuss this question for each challenge identified above.]

6) What support from the federal government would assist background check programs in your state in overcoming implementation challenges?

7) Are there lessons-learned that you can share with other agencies that conduct out-of-state background checks?

8) Is there anything else that we haven’t addressed that you would like to mention?

9) Are there any other people in your state from other programs or interested agencies that you think we should interview for this study?

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