Government is strengthening day-care regulations to better protect children by ensuring anyone working or volunteering at regulated child-care centres has criminal-record and child-abuse register checks.

Education and Early Childhood and Development Minister Karen Casey announced today, Dec. 22, that she now has the authority to prevent child-care staff from having contact with children until they have the proper paperwork.

“It was disappointing and unacceptable that past violations were occurring and I have a responsibility to ensure children are protected,” said Ms. Casey.

“We are fortunate to have so many qualified and dedicated staff in the child-care sector who understand the need to reduce any potential risk for children. These changes will help to do that by clearly stating that criminal background checks are current and updated regularly.”

The criminal-record check will be replaced by the vulnerable-sector check in June 2015, and must be renewed every five years.

A vulnerable-sector check goes beyond a criminal-record check to include a search of the pardoned sex offender database. Child abuse register checks are renewed every three years.

In August, the minister issued a memo to the child-care sector informing them changes were coming after staff made her aware of several regulated child-care centres in the province violating the regulations.

They were asked to ensure no child is left unsupervised with any staff member if the child-abuse and criminal-background checks are not in place.

Other amendments to the regulations make the intent and expectation for compliance clearer in certain areas, including:
— programming
— building and space requirements
— incident and accident reporting
— nutrition
— health, safety and communicable disease control

“We have consulted and listened to our partners in the child-care sector and these changes reflect what they asked for to help ensure that our regulations align with other jurisdictions and best practices,” said Ms. Casey.

Source: Release