A panel of lawmakers on recently approved an update to the state’s child care program licensing rule after more than a year of meetings and feedback from the early care and education community.
“I personally think it’s a work of art,” said Shannon Tremblay, director of the New Hampshire Child Care Advisory Council, of the update set to go into effect Sept. 22. (The Couch Family Foundation, which funds the New Hampshire Bulletin’s early care and education reporting position, is a funder of the advisory council.)
Those close to the process said the regulations were combed over line by line through months of meetings and focus groups. The changes, they said, would make the rule a more usable document for those in the field. Providers will now have latitude to set their own policies in certain areas, and the update adds a process for an independent informal resolution to address licensing disputes.
In a document submitted to the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules, the oversight body made up of House and Senate members, the Department of Health and Human Services pointed to some tweaks that may make care more accessible.
The agency said “broadening of the education and experience requirements” could bring more people into the field and increase the availability of child care. The agency also said that “[f]ewer staff will be required to have certifications in pediatric CPR and first aid,” and required yearly professional development training will go from 18 hours to 12.
The update also reduces the current requirement of “a minimum of 40 square feet of floor space per child” to 35 square feet.
Additionally, DHHS argued families in the state would “benefit from removal of the requirement for children to have an updated record of a health assessment on file every year or 2 years.” The department also noted program staff would no longer have to complete repeat health assessments after an initial exam upon starting employment.
The rule had been pulled off the oversight panel’s consent calendar, the list of items deemed uncontroversial enough for lawmakers to vote on all at once without discussion, for what Derry Republican Rep. Erica Layon described as “vague concerns” that had been expressed to her.
But lawmakers quickly and unanimously greenlit the rule once a DHHS official explained an urgency to approve them at the August meeting so that the state would be in compliance with federal requirements by the end of September. Layon said she had been unaware of the timeline and supported the move.
“We have worked with our child care community for over a year to go line by line through the rule and to make changes,” Melissa Clement, chief of the department’s Child Care Licensing Unit, told lawmakers.
That included working with the state’s legislatively enacted Child Care Advisory Council and more than a year of weekly meetings, she said. In July, the department hosted a public hearing that it reported as having roughly 50 attendees.
State law requires agencies to explain how they incorporated — or didn’t incorporate — public comments into their final rules. A packet submitted to lawmakers by the department shows it made several tweaks to the rule in response to that feedback.
Jennifer Legere, who owns the Brentwood, N.H., child care center A Place to Grow, said “it was nice that the child care community was involved in the rulemaking process this time.” She said that when she started this work 20 years ago, child care licensing and providers were in “two different worlds.”
“It doesn’t feel that way anymore,” Legere said. “It’s not adversarial in terms of relationship. There’s a lot of collaboration and support with one another, and I really appreciate that shift.”
While she appreciated that engagement, she said she would have liked to see one more opportunity for public review of the rule, once the department had made changes based on public comments.
She also said parts of the rule that now put the responsibility on providers to come up with their own policies in certain areas, rather than spelling out universal guidelines, would pose challenges.
For instance, when it comes to illness, the current rule provides a list of symptoms that should result in a child being sent home or denied entry into a program while exhibiting them. This list is removed in the updated rule. Concern was raised in public comment, but the department responded that “there are many resources readily available” on the issue.
“There will be more pressure on providers to be responsible for that,” Legere said. “That’s hard, and it provides a lack of clarity for parents, because now they’re going to say, ‘Well how did you come up with your policy, Jen? Why is your policy this?’ … I can go back and research how every single one of those, you know, policies was originally made, but it’s a little bit harder for me to have that content.”
Meanwhile, others view the shift to allowing providers to set more of their own policies as a positive one.
“There was a lot of places where child care licensing was almost micromanaging the way businesses were running,” said Marianne Barter, the departing chair of the Child Care Advisory Council who runs two child care programs, “and we were able to change the onus of the responsibility of certain policies onto the business itself.”
Lynn Ouellette, interim chair of the council, said “it makes it more individualized to how a center runs and what their philosophies are, versus the state saying we have to do this.”
Tremblay, the council’s director, said that might have been “the biggest bone of contention” in the field in regards to the regulations. Some providers want “clear-cut, black-and-white” policies, while others prefer the freedom, she said.
On the space per child change from 40 square feet to 35 square feet, Legere said that was significant and would be useful in her own operation. Though her waiting list spans hundreds, every new spot counts and impacts a family, she said.
“Anytime we can help out with these ratios in these little, tiny tweaks, I think there’s going to be a really big benefit to families in the community,” she said.