I was a little surprised to learn there weren’t already federal standards like these in place, but I wonder if becoming compliant with these standards will pose a problem for child-care centers, and leave a lot of parents in the lurch.

“…the Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday morning that it will for the first time impose tough national health and safety standards on all child-care facilities that accept government subsidies.

The proposed regulations will require workers in all subsidized child-care centers and homes to be trained in first-aid procedures, such as CPR, and safe sleeping practices. They call for quality-rating systems that parents can have easy access to and universal background and fingerprint checks of child-care workers. And they impose tough standards for monitoring and unannounced inspections to ensure that the regulations are being followed.

The new regulations would supersede the current patchwork of health and safety standards that each state now sets and that critics have long argued are too low in many states and endanger too many children. As many as one in five children who receive the child-care subsidy are in unlicensed and unregulated child-care settings with no health and safety requirements at all.”

Full story here.