Our disease detectives at the state and counties are at it again, investigating an outbreak of E. coli O157 . We are working with Arizona’s counties, other states, CDC, and regulatory agencies to determine the source of the outbreak. E. coli O157 is a strain that causes diarrhea, often bloody, along with abdominal cramps, headache, [...]
As parents prepare for children to return to school or child care, Bureau of Child Care Licensing has some helpful hints for you to keep in mind to better ensure that your child will be safe and well-cared for in your absence. You can check out a facility’s track record regarding compliance with licensing regulations [...]
This past weekend, we held the fourth annual “Empowering Habits and Empowering Lives” Empower Conference. More than 250 Early Care and Education professionals from all over Arizona participated in the all-day meeting. Conference participants explored the Empower Program's 10 Standards to Empower Children to Live Healthy Lives and learned how to be more effective through developing cultural [...]
It is hard to believe we’re in the 3rd year of our successful Empower Program. As a refresher for those of you that aren’t familiar with Empower, it’s a program that focuses on increasing healthy eating and active living, along with helping to provide smoke-free environments, in licensed child care facilities… reaching over 200,000 children [...]
The role of a surveyor can be a difficult one. Our team of licensing surveyors need to maintain neutrality as regulators and be able to apply the Arizona Administrative Code (otherwise known as “the rules”) to a wide variety of facilities within the healthcare system. Part of our surveillance includes investigating complaints- which can be generated from [...]
It’s been a while since I mentioned to you that our Division of Licensing has a really good web site called AZ Care Check. Our website provides a 3 year history of survey results, complaint investigation results and if any of our licensed facilities (nursing homes, assisted living, hospital and other medical facilities, childcare or [...]
In the fall of 2009, faced with a 3 billion dollar budget shortfall, the state of Arizona eliminated funding for licensing services from the budget of the Arizona Department of Health Services. We were given the authority to self-fund these services by passing the costs of providing this critical public health service back to the [...]
The new child care center standards went into effect last week. Check out our newly revamped child care licensing website, which has the latest for parents, consumers, childcare operators and others. Our Licensing, rules, and all the other ADHS experts who contributed to the new rules and did a fantastic job. Our success was directly [...]
