SB1913 amends the Child Care Act of 1969 to expand criminal background check requirements for people who work in child care settings through contracted entities. The bill requires any entity that contracts with the Department of Children and Family Services, the Department of Early Childhood, a child care facility, or a non-licensed service provider to ensure that employees placed in a child care facility undergo a criminal background investigation. Those entities must submit fingerprints to the Illinois State Police, which will run the prints against state and federal criminal history databases and charge a fee limited to the actual cost of the check.
The bill also establishes procedures for sharing background-check information with the relevant agency, the contracting entity, and the employee, including information about convictions and, upon request, criminal charges and their disposition. It creates confidentiality rules for criminal-charge information and limits transmission outside the agencies. In addition, it makes unauthorized disclosure of confidential criminal conviction information by certain state, facility, or police employees a Class A misdemeanor unless disclosure is otherwise authorized by the Act.
Impact
The bill would add a new Section 4.1a to the Child Care Act of 1969, creating a specific statutory background-check framework for employees of contractors who are placed in child care facilities. It would broaden the screening obligations beyond direct child care facility staff to include workers supplied by outside entities serving DCFS, the Department of Early Childhood, child care facilities, and non-licensed service providers. It also assigns the Illinois State Police a central role in fingerprint processing and criminal-history review, and it imposes confidentiality and penalty provisions governing the handling of sensitive records.
Sentiment
Based on the bill text and the absence of recorded committee testimony or votes, the measure appears to be framed as a child-safety and oversight bill rather than a controversial policy change. Its requirements are consistent with a protective approach to child care regulation, emphasizing screening, information sharing, and confidentiality. Because there is no available voting history or transcript discussion, there is no documented public sentiment in the record provided beyond the bill’s apparent safety-focused intent.
Contention
The main potential points of contention are likely to be the expanded burden on contracted service providers and the privacy/confidentiality rules for criminal-history information. Contractors and child care operators may be concerned about the administrative cost, fingerprinting process, and compliance obligations, while agencies and advocates for child safety may support the added screening. Another possible issue is the bill’s treatment of criminal charges and the limits on transmitting that information, which balances transparency for licensing decisions against confidentiality protections. No specific opposition or support is documented in the materials provided.