City Council oversight hearing: DOHMH reports median childcare background-check time ~30 days as portal aims to reduce delays

The New York City Council’s committees on Health, Oversight and Investigations, and the Subcommittee on Early Childhood Education held a joint oversight hearing on childcare background checks and permitting, hearing testimony from the mayor’s office and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) and public testimony from providers and advocates.

Council Member Lynn Shulman, chair of the Council’s Committee on Health, opened the hearing by outlining the stakes: layered federal, state and city background checks can create long delays, she said, and cited a 2023 staffing-vacancy survey and a case where a Greenpoint center closed after staff waited “nearly 5 months” for clearance. The committee took up proposed legislation including Intro 15 (by Majority Leader Sean Abreu) to limit repeat checks for people cleared within five years and Intro 135 (by Council Member Tiffany Caban) to require DOHMH to post closure orders and inspection summaries promptly.

Emmy Liss, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Childcare and Early Childhood Education, described the administration’s broader child-care expansion and the new provider permitting portal. “That’s why we launched the childcare permitting portal last month,” Liss said, adding the portal was intended to make it easier for providers to apply, upload documents and track progress as the city grows 2K and 3K seats.

DOHMH Deputy Commissioner Corinne Schiff said the agency has moved most clearance work into an online portal and assigned a dedicated unit to background checks. “Our median processing time right now is about 30 days,” Schiff told the council, noting the department aims to keep turnaround below the 45-day federal standard but that some cases exceed that timeline for reasons outside DOHMH’s control, particularly when a candidate has worked in another state and the city must await out-of-state registry responses.

Schiff and portal lead Aaron Yarborough described features designed to reduce delays: milestone tracking, a provider-facing dashboard that shows background-check status for all staff in an application, an integrated chat allowing DOHMH reviewers to leave comments, and a scheduling tool for inspections. Yarborough said the portal is integrated with DOHMH’s CCATS system but does not replace it.

Council members and public witnesses pressed officials on persistent pain points. Providers and advocates reported that provisional clearances often let staff start under supervision, but full clearance times remain uneven: the Daycare Council and others said only roughly 57% of clearance attempts were completed within 45 days in one provider survey, with many taking between 45 days and six months. Cuddles Child Care’s human-resources coordinator, Bailey Appel, said workers sometimes must submit termination letters to begin a new employer’s process, a requirement that can interrupt pay and lengthen transitions.

DOHMH said it processes roughly 3,000 background-check applications per month (September production reached about 4,200), maintains a staff of about 60 focused on clearances, and at times has around 500 applications pending beyond 45 days for a variety of reasons, including awaiting out-of-state responses or applicant data errors. Officials described steps to reduce simple errors—such as requiring re-entry of birth date fields—and promised ongoing monitoring and user support, including office hours and training for providers.

Witnesses representing settlement houses, provider groups and unions offered generally positive feedback about the new portal but urged improved portability for cleared staff, faster out-of-state data sharing, clearer rejection notices and language support for non-English applicants. The committee closed the hearing and invited written testimony to the record within 72 hours at testimony@council.nyc.gov.

The hearing identified concrete follow-ups for the council and agencies: DOHMH agreed to discuss Intro 15 with counsel; the mayor’s office and DOHMH will continue integration work with DOE and state systems where permitted; and staff committed to reporting additional data to council offices about provisional vs. full clearances and the number of workers in provisional status.

Ending: The committees adjourned after public testimony; staff said they will review written submissions and continue oversight in budget hearings where funding and staffing needs can be examined further.