Child care providers want out from developmentally disabled rule

“Positive support strategies” sounds like a good thing.

And no one at the House Subcommittee on Childcare Access and Affordability hearing Wednesday spoke against what the state rule by that name seeks to accomplish: care for children with developmental disabilities that’s person-centered, not punitive.

But child care providers say the rule means an onerous amount of paperwork and requires eight-14 hours of training that’s largely not applicable to the work they do – including instruction on such topics as “appropriate and inappropriate uses of shackles, psychotropic medications [and] solitary confinement.”

The costs of coping with the rule could even lead some providers to turn away children with developmental disabilities they’d otherwise be happy to serve.

“I fear the very real possibility that this rule could decrease access to childcare, which is the opposite of what this committee is charged with doing,” said Rep. Mary Franson (R-Alexandria), the subcommittee chair.

Addressing the rule was one policy recommendation from the Legislative Task Force on Access to Affordable Child Care, which Franson co-chaired in the interim.

Franson is preparing a bill that would exempt child care providers from the positive support strategies rule, which she said is putting an “undue burden” on providers. The subcommittee approved its contents and recommended it to the House Health and Human Services Reform Committee.

The positive supports rule took effect Aug. 31, 2015, but enforcement has lagged so far.

Child care providers “can’t be in limbo forever” waiting for the Department of Human Services to decide how they will enforce the rule, said Clare Sanford, government relations chair for the Minnesota Child Care Association.