Background Check Requirements for Working With Minors in CA

If you want to work with children in California, expect a fingerprint-based criminal background check before your first day. California’s background check requirements for working with minors apply to paid staff, regular volunteers, and in many cases the adults who simply live in a licensed facility. Your fingerprints are run against the California Department of Justice’s state records and, in most cases, the FBI’s national database. Certain convictions bar you permanently; others may be waived through an exemption process. The specific statute that governs your check depends on where you’ll be working.

Who Needs a Background Check

Nearly every adult with regular, professional contact with minors in California needs one. The statute that applies depends on the setting.

Licensed Child Care and Residential Facilities

Facilities licensed by the California Department of Social Services carry the broadest rule. Under the Health and Safety Code, every adult who will be present in a community care facility or child day care facility must obtain a criminal record clearance or an exemption before setting foot on the premises.¹ That covers administrators, direct caregivers, non-caregiving staff, volunteers who have contact with children, and any adult who lives in the facility.² The clearance has to be in hand before that initial presence, not after orientation or a probationary period.

Public and Private Schools

Private schools must fingerprint every applicant for a position that involves contact with students. The DOJ checks both state and federal records, and the school cannot bring the person on board until the state-level check is complete. Private school employers are also required to enroll in ongoing subsequent arrest notification so they hear about future criminal activity by their employees.

Public school districts have a parallel rule for classified (non-teaching) employees. The governing board must fingerprint applicants for non-certificated positions, and the district cannot employ the person until the DOJ finishes the state criminal history check.³

Youth Service Organizations

Assembly Bill 506 added Section 18975 to the Business and Professions Code and extended background check duties to youth service organizations, including youth sports leagues and day camps. Every administrator, employee, and regular volunteer must complete a state and federal criminal history check.⁴ A regular volunteer is someone 18 or older who has direct contact with or supervision of children for more than 16 hours per month or 32 hours per year. Occasional parent helpers at a single weekend event usually fall below that line; anyone with a recurring role almost certainly clears it.

What the Check Actually Searches

A California background check for a minor-facing role pulls from up to three sources.

The DOJ first runs your prints against its statewide criminal record repository, which draws in arrests, convictions, and pending proceedings reported by California law enforcement agencies.⁵ When a federal-level check is required, the DOJ forwards your prints to the FBI for a national search, catching out-of-state arrests and convictions that wouldn’t appear in California alone. Licensed facilities, schools, and youth service organizations all get the federal check.

The DOJ also maintains the Child Abuse Central Index, a database of substantiated reports of physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and severe neglect.⁶ For licensed child care and residential facilities, CDSS checks the CACI before issuing a license, and any hit must be independently investigated before the department acts on it.⁷ A CACI listing doesn’t automatically disqualify you, but it triggers a review that can delay or block your clearance.

How to Get the Check Done: Live Scan Step by Step

California uses electronic fingerprinting, called Live Scan, for essentially all background checks tied to working with minors.

Get the Right Form From Your Employer

Before you visit a fingerprinting site, your employer or licensing agency has to give you a completed Request for Live Scan Service form (BCIA 8016).⁸ The employer fills in the Originating Agency Identification (ORI) code, the applicant type, and the governing statute. The ORI code tells the DOJ where to send your results. Get it wrong and your results go to the wrong agency or get rejected, meaning you may need to be re-fingerprinted. Don’t fill those fields in yourself unless your employer explicitly tells you to.

Visit an Authorized Live Scan Site

Take the form and a valid government-issued photo ID to an authorized Live Scan location. The DOJ maintains a searchable directory by county.⁹ Call first to confirm hours and walk-in policy. Some sites only serve applicants whose employers hold a billing number, so check for a “BNR” designation before you drive over.

Fees

You’ll usually pay two categories at the time of fingerprinting. The government processing fee covers the DOJ and FBI database searches; depending on the submission category, this can range from roughly $32 to $42 for the state search and $15 to $17 for the federal search.¹⁰ The vendor also charges a rolling fee that varies by site. Some employers pay directly or reimburse, and certain statutes waive the government portion, so ask before you pay out of pocket.

How Long It Takes

If your prints don’t match anything, the DOJ typically processes the transaction electronically within 48 to 72 hours. A match triggers manual review by a technician, which takes longer with no guaranteed timeline.⁵ FBI results can add time; after 90 days without a response, the FBI treats its portion of the check as complete. For child day care facilities, the DOJ must notify CDSS of the results within 14 calendar days of receiving the fingerprint images.²

TrustLine for Nannies and Other Unlicensed In-Home Caregivers

TrustLine is California’s registry for child care providers who don’t need a state license, so it covers nannies, babysitters, au pairs, and other in-home caregivers.¹¹ Registration is legally required for in-home providers who receive government child care subsidy payments; families and nanny placement agencies also use it voluntarily as a screening tool.

CDSS and the California Child Care Resource and Referral Network run the program jointly. You complete a TrustLine application, submit fingerprints through Live Scan, and pay the associated fees. TrustLine searches DOJ and FBI criminal records and cross-references the CACI and CDSS Community Care Licensing databases, so it’s somewhat broader than a standard employment check.¹² A cleared provider is listed on the registry, and parents can verify the listing by contacting TrustLine directly.

What Youth Service Organizations Owe Beyond Fingerprinting

AB 506 is not just a fingerprinting statute. Youth service organizations carry three separate obligations:

Background checks for every administrator, employee, and regular volunteer, run through the DOJ under Penal Code Section 11105.3.¹³
Mandated reporter training for those same individuals on identifying and reporting child abuse and neglect. The free online course from the Office of Child Abuse Prevention satisfies the requirement.¹⁴
Written child abuse prevention policies that include procedures for reporting suspected abuse to outside authorities and, wherever possible, a two-adult rule requiring at least two mandated reporters present when adults supervise children.¹⁴

Treating AB 506 as fingerprinting alone misses two-thirds of the law. The training and policy duties are independently enforceable.

Convictions That Disqualify You

California sorts disqualifying offenses into two groups, and the distinction decides whether you have a path back.

Non-Exemptible Crimes

Some convictions permanently bar you from working in a licensed facility, with no possibility of an exemption. CDSS currently identifies 60 non-exemptible offenses, including murder, rape, torture, kidnapping, sexual battery, human trafficking, and any crime requiring sex offender registration under Penal Code Section 290.¹⁵¹⁶ If your record includes one of these, the process ends there. No application, reference, or rehabilitation evidence changes the outcome.

Other Disqualifying Offenses

A conviction for any crime other than a minor traffic infraction will initially disqualify you from a licensed-facility position, misdemeanors included. The difference is that these are exemptible: you can apply for a criminal record exemption, which is a case-by-case review of whether you should still be allowed to work despite the conviction.¹

How the Criminal Record Exemption Works

Once CDSS sends you a disqualification notice for an exemptible offense, you have 45 days from the date on the letter to submit a complete exemption package to the Care Provider Management Branch. Miss the deadline and you forfeit that exemption opportunity. The package must include:

A written request. If you’re the licensee or facility operator, you submit the request on behalf of the individual.
A signed personal statement describing the circumstances of each conviction, including approximate dates, what happened, and what has changed since.
Three character references, none of them relatives or facility employees, each on the official LIC 301E form with contact information.
Rehabilitation evidence: certificates from classes, treatment programs, or counseling completed since the offense. Anger management, substance abuse treatment, and professional training all count.
Probation documentation, if available, such as a court minute order or letter from a probation officer.

CPMB weighs the nature and severity of the offense, how much time has passed, and the strength of the rehabilitation evidence. If the exemption is denied, you can appeal in writing within 15 days of the denial letter.¹⁵ Both deadlines run from the date on the letter, not the date you receive it, so check your mail.

Keeping a Clearance Current

Subsequent Arrest Notification

A California clearance isn’t a one-time snapshot. The DOJ offers a subsequent arrest notification service that alerts an employer or licensing agency whenever a cleared individual is arrested for a new offense. Youth service organizations may enroll their administrators, employees, and regular volunteers under Penal Code Section 11105.3, and private schools are required to enroll.¹³

Organizations using the service take on ongoing duties. When someone leaves, the employer must notify the DOJ immediately so notifications stop, and the organization must verify at least every six months that each enrolled person still holds a role that warrants monitoring.¹³ A notification for someone no longer employed must be returned to the DOJ right away.¹⁷

Transferring a Clearance to a New Employer

If you already hold a CDSS clearance or exemption and change jobs, you may be able to transfer it instead of starting over. Active exemptions can move between state-licensed facilities, the Home Care Aide Registry, and the TrustLine Registry. The new employer submits a Criminal Record Exemption Transfer Request (LIC 9188) to CPMB, and you should not be re-fingerprinted during the process because that can slow things down.¹⁸

Transfers between county-licensed agencies follow their own rules and are limited to the same licensing category: a family child care home clearance transfers to another family child care home, but not to an unrelated facility type. In every case, CDSS must approve the individual’s presence at the new facility before any contact with clients.¹⁸

What Happens When Organizations Skip the Check

For licensed child day care facilities, failing to submit fingerprints as required triggers a civil penalty of $100 per violation per day, up to five days for a first offense. A second violation within 12 months extends the maximum to 30 days, and the violation can also support revoking or suspending the facility’s license.²

Beyond statutory penalties, an organization that skips screening and later employs someone who harms a child faces substantial exposure to negligent hiring claims. Courts generally hold that when a reasonable screening process would have surfaced warning signs, the organization had a duty to run it.

Extra Rules When an Employer Uses a Third-Party Screener

If an employer uses a private screening company rather than going directly through Live Scan, the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act adds requirements. The FCRA requires a clear, written, standalone disclosure to the applicant that a background check will be obtained, and the applicant must authorize it in writing before the check runs.¹⁹

If the employer decides not to hire based partly or entirely on the report, federal law requires a two-step adverse action process: first a pre-adverse action notice with a copy of the report and a summary of the applicant’s rights, giving time to dispute inaccuracies, and only after a reasonable wait a final adverse action notice confirming the decision.

Criminal Records and Federal Anti-Discrimination Law

Even where California mandates a check, employers can’t automatically reject every applicant with a record. The EEOC’s enforcement guidance under Title VII requires that any conviction-based exclusion be job-related and consistent with business necessity, weighed against the nature and severity of the offense, the time since the conviction or sentence completion, and the nature of the position.²⁰

Arrests without convictions are not reliable evidence of criminal conduct, and blanket policies treating arrests the same as convictions are likely to violate Title VII. An employer can look at the conduct underlying an arrest if that conduct is relevant to the position.²¹ For roles directly supervising children, the business necessity argument for excluding serious criminal conduct is strong, but it still has to run through an individualized assessment rather than an automatic rejection.

1
California Legislative Information. California Health and Safety Code 1522
2
California Legislative Information. California Health and Safety Code 1596.871
3
California Legislative Information. California Education Code 45125
4
California Legislative Information. California Bill AB-506 Youth Service Organizations Child Abuse and Neglect Prevention
5
State of California – Department of Justice – Office of the Attorney General. Fingerprint Background Checks
6
California Department of Justice. Child Abuse Central Index
7
Legal Information Institute. California Code of Regulations Title 22 Section 80019.2 – Child Abuse Central Index
8
California Department of Justice. Request for Live Scan Service
9
State of California – Department of Justice – Office of the Attorney General. Live Scan Locations
10
State of California – Department of Justice – Office of the Attorney General. Applicant Fingerprint Processing Fees
11
TrustLine. Background Checks for Caregiver Services in California
12
California Department of Social Services. TrustLine Registry Application
13
California Legislative Information. California Penal Code 11105.3
14
California Legislative Information. Today’s Law As Amended – AB-506 Youth Service Organizations
15
California Department of Social Services. Community Care Licensing – Exemptions
16
California Department of Social Services. Non-Exemptible Crimes
17
State of California – Department of Justice – Office of the Attorney General. Frequently Asked Questions – Applicant Agencies
18
California Department of Social Services. Transferring a Criminal Record Exemption to a New Facility
19
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. United States Code Title 15 Section 1681b
20
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Enforcement Guidance on the Consideration of Arrest and Conviction Records in Employment Decisions Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act
21
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Questions and Answers About the EEOCs Enforcement Guidance on the Consideration of Arrest and Conviction Records