Regulatory Improvement Process

Overall Purpose

To revise and improve upon the State of Ohio licensing system through a thorough review of all statute, rules and regulations by wide-ranging stakeholders while streamlining the overall system of regulation with a core focus on ESSENTIAL health, safety and overall quality in all settings.

Goals for Ohio’s Regulatory System (Regulation for the 21st Century)

• To shape a high quality early care and education market that meets the needs of the families that utilize it and the needs of the children who are part of it.

• To shape a market from the ground up by creating a system that implicitly describes to providers what is expected and the consequences if those expectations are not met.

• To provide parents with easily understood data so they can make good early care and education choices on behalf of their children

• To design a rater reliable system which includes a quality assurance component to insure the consistent application of licensing rules across the state
  

Guiding Principles

• This is not a process to merely merge existing rules

• Prepare for the regulations of all settings, including family child care home businesses

• Build on strong practices and evidence

• Focus on the essential, foundational health, safety and developmental appropriate practices. 

• Carefully manage the relationship with quality standards

• Create a set of regulations or chapters that build upon each other in an effort to ease usage for providers

• Consider separate “chapter” for school age; highlight operating differences between stand alone school age and a school age program included in an early childhood setting (infants and/or toddlers and/or preschoolers AND school age)

• Ohio’s quality system will build upon the essential health, safety and developmentally appropriate practices including within the regulatory system