Federal childcare facility lacked background checks, watchdog warns

A childcare facility that watches federal workers’  children aged six weeks to seven years old had failed to conduct background checks on five employees, did not conduct background checks using fingerprints on 13 other employees and did not perform Sex Offender Registry checks on some employees, the Energy Department’s chief watchdog found.

“We identified that 5 of the 18 employees did not have any background checks performed until the initiation of our audit in June 2018,” the Inspector General audit report about the Children’s Center at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory explains.

The IG report notes that per the Crime Control Act of 1990, the checks should have been implemented by 1991, but the facility did not implement them until 1999 and all five of those employees were hired earlier than 1999.

“Although required for all active employees, a Fermi official stated that background checks had not been completed on these five employees because they had been hired between 1980 and 1998, prior to Fermi’s implementation of background checks in 1999,” the report notes.

The IG report says that, “Fermi officials were unaware of the Crime Control Act and its requirements for fingerprinting” and that “a Fermi official stated that it was an oversight on Fermi’s behalf in not ensuring that background checks for employees hired before 1999 were completed.”

The IG found that 10 of the childcare workers had not undergone Sex Offender Registry checks, though the report added that the employees have now been checked. 

“As a result of our audit work, Fermi completed 9 of the 10 missing Sex Offender Registry checks," the report says. "The one remaining check was not performed because the employee had been terminated.”

According to the IG audit report, "officials stated that a change in background check providers led to some employees not having Sex Offender Registry checks. Specifically, the sex offender searches went from being part of standard procedures to being an option that had to be selected and hiring recruiters mistakenly did not select the sex offender search option," the report explains.