This is a story about making great-tasting sugar free lemonade from lemons. About a year and a half ago the legislature passed a bill that eliminated our general funds for licensing (nursing homes, assisted living, hospitals, behavioral health, child care etc.). In exchange, the Bill included a provision that gave us “exempt” rulemaking authority to collect fees to run our licensing and assurance activities.
We ran diagnostics and estimated what the fees would need to be to satisfy our statutory responsibilities for each of our programs and ran a rule package to set the new fees. During the comment period our licensed childcare facilities expressed deep concerns about the fees. One of the root problems was that childcare facilities were on a 3-year licensing cycle and their fees had been nearly completely subsidized by taxpayers (the general fund). Some licensees were holding $150 licenses that were good for 3 years and that were paid as late as December of ’09. As a result, we couldn’t convert to a 1-year cycle which would have cut their out of pocket expenses by 2/3.
As an alternative- we used federal funds through our Title V Maternal & Child Health funds to provide an incentive for facilities to improve physical activity and nutrition during the day. Childcare facilities that elect to participate in our Empower program essentially receive a 50% discount on their fees in exchange for implementing simple and cheap operational changes that improve nutrition and physical activity at childcare facilities. Well over 99% of facilities have elected to do the Empower program in exchange for the discount. Only 2 facilities have elected to pay the full fee in the year and a half the program has been operational. Feedback from facilities and families (especially moms) has been positive.
Now there’s a nationwide buzz about our creative solution to leverage Title V Maternal & Child Health funding to improve physical activity and nutrition for pre-schoolers. Jeanette Shea has been invited to present the Empower program at the national Childhood Obesity Conference next week. The planning committee included folks who saw the presentation on Empower at the National Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs last February, and they wanted to make sure folks from all over the country had a chance to see the exciting things happening in Arizona.
But wait- there’s more. The Institute of Medicine report on Early Childhood Obesity Prevention Policies came out yesterday- and Arizona was recognized as one of the states over the last two years who have improved nutrition and physical activity in preschools. Those changes were a direct result of our work with Empower. On the local front, the Arizona Academy of Pediatrics presented their coveted Community Partnership Award to Karen Sell this month to recognize the success of the Empower program.
The recognition is nice, but the best part of all is the response from the child care community and parents. They’ve embraced Empower and that has changed the way child care is delivered throughout the state. Now, we’ve started a national dialog on physical activity and nutrition in preschool. Necessity really is the mother of invention!
Our Empower program is hosting its second annual conference Empowering Habits, Empowering Lives: Super Heroes in Action on May 4. The conference is a great opportunity for providers in Early Care and Education settings to learn the new 10 Empower standards that have been established for 2013. The conference sessions will also equip participants with the resources and tools essential to implement the 10 standards, thus transforming them into super heroes in action! Check out the conference flyer for more details.
Updating AZ Childcare Center Standards
June 15th, 2010You probably remember how we shifted from general funds to fee-based inspection programs. The most controversial fee increase was for child care facilities, as the costs of inspecting child care facilities had been almost entirely subsidized by the state’s general fund. In the end, we found a way to use alternative funding sources to provide a 50% subsidy for the child care licensure fees in exchange for participating in the Empower Pack program. After implementing our successful Empower program, a new law was passed (SB 1315) that makes some changes to the way we need to run our child care licensing program.
The new law requires us to conduct a cost analysis of our child care licensing program by February and then review and adjust our fees accordingly. We can use the exempt rulemaking process to lower, but not raise, the fees. The law gives child care facilities perpetual licenses, in other words they don’t expire. We still have the authority to revoke or suspend licenses if licensees don’t pay their license fee. We also need to set up a payment program. If funding is available, the law says we should convert from 3 year licensure fees to a 1 year fee. It also requires us to amend the child care center rules by October 1 and amend the child care group home rules by October 1, 2011. We have a 1-year rulemaking exemption for amending the child care facility and child care group home rules.
You might be out of breath after reading the new requirements, but we’ll continue to do our best. We’re starting by providing our new draft child care facility rules for comment today. The newly proposed rules are posted on the AZDHS website. We’ll have a 30-day comment period that will include public meetings in Tucson and Phoenix. The new child care facility rules are expected to be effective on or before our October 1, 2010 deadline.
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Posted in Licensing
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