Don’t let expired background clearances force your child care business to unexpectedly send staff home or even temporarily close! The Municipality of Anchorage (MOA) Child Care Licensing office reminds programs to routinely check the status of background clearances in the New Alaska Background Check System (NABCS/BCP). It is a requirement that all background clearances are valid at all times.
Background clearances are valid for five years. Because it has been five years since MOA Child Care Licensing began using NABCS, many of the background clearances are now expiring. It is each facility’s responsibility to ensure all information for all individuals in the Background Check Program (BCP) is current, including maintaining valid background clearances and removing anyone who is no longer associated with the facility.
Programs should make it a priority to go into their facility’s account and review all staff/household members to ensure no one’s background clearance has expired. For those that will be expiring, take action to get fingerprints re-rolled and an electronic application and fee submitted directly to the Background Check Program. This process takes time, so create a system to routinely access the facility’s account to ensure all staff/household members remain current with their background clearances.
Any person/staff/household member with an expired background clearance cannot be on the premises or be in contact with child care children until all required items have been submitted to the BCP and that person has received a minimum of a provisional clearance. At that point, the staff member in each facility who manages the BCP account MUST go into the system and take action to hire/provisionally hire the person. If this step is not completed, the person is not authorized to be on the premises.
If all these steps are not completed and a background clearance expires, facilities and families may experience an interruption in care or may not be able to remain open while awaiting updated background clearances. When these steps are completed, please print the letter of authorization and add to the person’s personnel file.
MOA Child Care Licensing has no access to the Background Check Program and cannot access any portion of the website to provide assistance. The BCP staff receive requests and calls continually, so it may take multiple attempts to reach assistance. Below is a link to the BCP website and the account User Guide.
- Background Check Program (alaska.gov) – This is the link to the State of Alaska’s website regarding the Background Check Program.
- Background Check Program User Guide (alaska.gov) – This is the link to the BCP User Guide. See section 4.2/pg. 49, regarding how to do a search for pending expirations.