Two Background Checks, Two Agencies, One Big Headache

Ask a room full of Missouri daycare owners what confuses new providers most, and background checks win going away. Not because checking backgrounds is wrong — it's right, and every owner I know wants it done. Because Missouri makes you do it twice, through two agencies that don't share a counter.

Check number one: the FCSR. The Family Care Safety Registry is run by the Department of Health and Senior Services — DHSS. Not DESE. That one fact trips up almost everybody, because DESE is who licenses you, so DESE is who you ask. The FCSR wants a registration form, a copy of the worker's Social Security card, and $16, sent by mail to Jefferson City, or done online for $16 plus a small processing fee. Employers who want to screen staff through the registry need their own separate access on top of that.

Check number two: the fingerprint check. DESE's Office of Childhood runs its own comprehensive, fingerprint-based background check for licensed child care. Different system. Different process. Same human being getting checked.

So a teacher you hire on Monday clears one system and waits on the other, and your classroom ratio doesn't care which agency is holding the paper. You're short-staffed either way.

Here's my honest opinion, from the operator's chair: one thorough background check, done once, shared between the agencies, would protect kids better than two disconnected ones that each assume the other is watching. Duplication isn't diligence. It's just duplication.

Until the state figures that out, you still have to run both. The background checks page on this site walks through each one — which agency, which form, what it costs — with links to the official pages so you're not piecing it together from three websites and a rumor.