Child‑safety advocates urge licensing and background checks for municipal camps; towns warn mandates could raise prices and cut access

Hartford — Testimony before the Committee on Children sharpened a debate over whether municipal summer and youth camps should be required to obtain state licensure and submit staff to the same background‑check rules that govern licensed child‑care programs.

Christina Guillot, acting child advocate in the Office of the Child Advocate, told the panel that Senate Bill 6’s provisions addressing camps and unlicensed child‑care settings aim to reduce risk to children by requiring background checks, criminal‑history reviews and checks of the DCF child‑abuse registry and the sex‑offender registry.

“Licensure is the gold standard for ensuring the safety of children in child‑care and camp settings,” Guillot said. “If licensure cannot move forward…the most foundational aspect of safety is background checks.”

Guillot urged that statutory requirements include state and federal criminal histories, the DCF central child‑abuse registry and the sex‑offender registry, and that municipal child‑care programs — not only private camps — be brought into the statutory framework or covered by background‑check mandates.

The Office of Early Childhood’s commissioner, Beth Feig, said OEC supports licensing municipal youth camps in principle but warned of a substantial fiscal and staffing impact: licensing the currently exempt municipal programs would require OEC to hire additional staff to carry out inspections and oversight. “It would probably double our summer‑camp staff, which is about 13 people,” Feig said, and the agency does not yet know the total number of municipal camps because they are not currently registered with OEC.

Municipal leaders pushed back. Hannah Lemick of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities said towns and cities already have multiple layers of oversight — risk managers, school or municipal HR, police and fire departments — and that adding OEC licensure would impose unfunded mandates and could raise participation costs for families. “A difference in just $200 a week in program costs could force parents to make the untenable choice between going to work and caring for their children,” Lemick said.

Municipal recreation supervisors and several providers asked the committee to alter the statutory exemptions instead of imposing full licensure. Recreation directors suggested statutory language that would require background checks for all licensed‑exempt providers (amendments to Conn. Gen. Stat. 19a‑77 and 19a‑420 were discussed during testimony) and recommended streamlined, third‑party background‑check systems to reduce cost and administrative burden.

Data and privacy concerns: Scott Gaughan, the state’s chief data officer at the Office of Policy and Management, described proposed changes to the P‑20 WIN preschool‑through‑workforce data system and the disconnected‑youth reporting requirements in SB 6. He said expanding those reports and adding new ongoing requirements would increase complexity, administrative burden and privacy risks; P‑20 WIN work is largely grant‑funded, he noted, and those funds can be time‑limited.

What was said about enforcement and practice: Several municipal witnesses and providers said many town programs already require background checks, staff training and other safeguards. OEC and the child advocate said that compliance is voluntary when programs are exempt, and that statute is needed to ensure universal checks and standardized requirements across public and private providers.

What happened next: The committee took the testimony and did not vote on SB 6 at the hearing. Witnesses on both sides asked for further drafting and for technical fixes to address towns’ administrative capacity and to create streamlined background‑check mechanisms.