Some New York City Childcare Providers Did Not Always Comply With Health and Safety Requirements

New York did not ensure that selected New York City providers (operating in Brooklyn, NY) that received funding from the Child Care and Development Fund complied with applicable State and local requirements related to the health and safety of children. We found potentially hazardous physical conditions at all 11 locations operated by the 3 providers that we reviewed. Moreover, we found that the providers did not comply with requirements to obtain background checks on employees. The instances of noncompliance occurred because New York had no written procedures regarding monitoring of legally exempt providers' compliance with physical condition and background check requirements. In addition, New York's requirement that providers access a child abuse and maltreatment system to perform one required background check was inconsistent with current State law.

We recommended that New York ensure that the health and safety issues noted in our report are corrected, develop written procedures to ensure that legally exempt providers' compliance with physical condition and background check requirements is regularly monitored, and seek a change to State law to allow providers access to the child abuse and maltreatment system or take other steps to ensure that required background checks are completed.

New York State concurred with all of our recommendations and provided information on actions that it had taken or planned to take to address our recommendations.