Author: Art Beeler *** On April 29th the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced a shift in policy that will for the first time allow released prisoners residing in “halfway houses” to take advantage of the services made available through the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid Expansion. The change will provide much-needed medical and rehabilitative services to countless former inmates that would not otherwise have access to essential healthcare resources. It may seem like a minor change but as a practical matter it is likely to do more to encourage successful reentry than any other single policy decision in…
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New federal screening requirements for child care workers
Child care workers in every state are subject to rigorous criminal background checks that may result in mandatory bars to employment. Until now, each state has been generally free to define its own standards regarding screening for criminal history. That is about to change. By September of next year, states receiving funds under the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act of 2014 (which appropriates over $ 2.5 billion each year to fund state child care and child welfare programs) must adopt minimum federally-defined screening standards for child care workers or risk loss of funding. The revised statutory standards…
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