Individuals affiliated with a licensed or certified child care provider must complete an enhanced background study every five years. The Department of Human Services began a phased rollout of enhanced background studies for child care provider types on Oct. 4, 2018. This means the first enhanced child care background studies will start to expire in October 2023.
To comply with the five year requirement, new studies will need to be submitted; however, those new studies should not be submitted more than 90 calendar days before the individual’s study expiration date. In NETStudy 2.0, the entity roster shows the study expiration date for each individual affiliated with a child care entity. Child care entities will have until the expiration date to submit a new study for each individual.
New studies that are submitted too far in advance of the study expiration date will not extend the original expiration date and will not meet the requirement for a new study every five years. For example, for an enhanced child care background study with an expiration date of Oct. 4, the earliest the entity should submit a new study for that affiliated individual would be July 6.
The study expiration date is five years from the original determination date. The study expiration date will be based on a study subject’s original enhanced study’s determination date, which may or may not be the study that your entity submitted. Even if another entity submitted that original study, the correct expiration date will show up in NETStudy 2.0.
Child care centers and family child care licensors need to manage their rosters in NETStudy 2.0 and submit studies for individuals based on individual study expiration dates.
