Facilities that serve children and other vulnerable people are only as good as their caregivers. State regulators ensure that caregivers are competent by managing requirements for continuing education.
To manage continuing education, agencies may engage in several different activities. They may need to approve continuing education courses and providers. They may need to track the hours accumulated by licensees. Many agencies also conduct continuing education audits to ensure that licensees have taken the continuing education courses they’ve claimed. GL Suite can help with all of these, and more.
Agencies must approve the continuing education courses available to licensees. To that end, they collect information and documentation from would-be course providers, who then pay fees. A child care licensing system simplifies the process by minimizing staff data entry related to course approval and by allowing course-related information to be uploaded as it is received rather than all at once. When a course provider has met all requirements and paid the necessary fees, your child care software automatically approves the application and creates a course entity in the system.
Child Care licensing software categorizes and calculates hours according to each agency’s requirements. Using these rules, the system can prevent licensees from completing their renewals until continuing-education requirements have been met. The system can generate letters automatically that tell licensees how many continuing education hours they still need, and in which areas. To allow continuing education to be shared efficiently, your software should interface with course providers as well as websites that allow course information to be entered easily.
Not only can your child care licensing system record continuing education hours automatically, it also can calculate the number of hours that are still due, then generate and send deficiency notices. Notices can be sent manually or automatically, depending upon your agency’s needs. To support agencies that check randomly selected licensees for auditing purposes, the system can choose a specified percentage of licensees on whatever schedule an agency would like.
With a configurable licensing system, your agency can support the management of continuing education – and ensure the competence of caregivers and other licensees – regardless of your agency’s requirements.
Learn more about tracking CE hours, along with our Child Care Licensing Solutions.
