Wisconsin Department of Children and Families - Division of Early Care and Education
Bureau of Early Care Regulation
Child Care Certification Policy Manual
As mentioned earlier in this module s. 48.651, Stats. requires all child care providers to complete professional development annually. The statute does not specify the amount of hours to be completed, only that ongoing training related health and safety and/or child development is required annually. DCF 202.08(1)(b)5 requires a regular operator, including employees/volunteers in regular certified settings to complete 5 hours of qualifying continuing education annually. The requirement for continuing education does not begin until the operator is granted Regular certification. For example, an operator is provisionally certified 3/2/20 through 9/2/20. But on 8/2/20 the operator completes pre-service training. The provisional category is ended 8/1/20 and the regular category granted 8/2/20 through 3/1/22. By 8/2/21 the provider will need to have completed 5 hours of continuing education.
At least 5 hours of continuing education annually must be in a topic broadly or specifically related to health and safety, or child development, and may be non-credit or credit-based education. Types of training acceptable may include workshops, conferences, seminars, lectures, correspondence courses, home study courses and independent reading/viewing of educational materials. The time spent renewing cardiopulmonary resuscitation training may be counted towards the required continuing education hours, but must be entered in WISCCRS as “CPR” rather than continuing education. Failure to comply with continuing education requirements shall result in an issuance of a Non-compliance Statement or sanctions ranging from warning to revocation. Certification workers shall not modify a family child care operator’s category from regular to provisional for violations of continuing education requirements.
Continuing education hours completed in excess of the 5-hour requirement may be used to meet the continuing education requirement for the following year. Certifiers may choose to enter any hours carried over by either option described below.
For example, if an operator was required to complete 5 hours between March 2019 and March 2020 but actually completed 9 hours in that time frame, the hours can be entered in one of two ways:
Option 1
Enter the 5 hours earned for 2019-2020 with a comment indicating s/he earned 4 additional hours that will be credited to 2020-21. And then, when entering the hours for '20-21, enter the 5 hours (assuming s/he earned 1 hour more) and in the comments indicate that 4 of the hours were credited from '19-20. This way, the continuing education Webi report will not show 9 hours for '19-20 and another 5 hours for '20-21.
Option 2
Enter all 9 hours for ‘19-20 and add a comment indicating the credit for the following year. In this case, do not enter any hours for the next year as all 9 were earned and entered in ‘19-20. When entering hours in this way, users will have to query the WebI report for a two-year time period.
Family child care operators who completed both Modules A and B of the Introduction to the Child Care Profession as pre-service training during the operator’s provisional certification period (not to exceed six (6) months) may use Module B to meet the requirements for continuing education through the end of the initial two-year certification period. After the initial recertification/renewal, the regular operator shall complete 5 hours of continuing education annually.
Effective 9/1/21 certifiers must monitor for compliance with continuing education by the date due. Certifiers may require operators to submit to the certification agency evidence of completed continuing education by the continuing education due date, or the certification worker may verify documentation during monitoring visits that occur on or before the continuing education due date.
Note: If during the BRO certification review the information is not current, this may result in an agency non-compliance/finding and the information will need to be gathered and updated as a part of the Agency Review Correction Plan.
Example:
An applicant is granted Provisional certification 5/3/18 with a provisional category expiration date of 11/3/18 (6 months maximum Provisional category).
The provisional operator completes pre-service training (including Module A and B) on 6/27/18 and is granted a regular certification category 6/27/18 with an expiration date of 5/2/20 (2 years from provisional category start date).
The regular operator is not required to complete continuing education prior to his/her first expiration date of 5/2/20.
The regular operator is granted re-certification 5/3/20 through 5/2/22. If the operator completes 5 hours of continuing education by 5/2/21 s/he is in compliance.
The new requirement for continuing education went into effect April 1, 2018, and existing certified operators were given notice of the new requirements for continuing education on February 28, 2018, in BECR Provider Memo 2018-01. That memo specified 10 hours of continuing education was required, but has since been reduced to 5 hours in DCF 202.08(1)(b)5.
Effective 4/1/18 pre-service training and continuing education shall be entered in WISCCRS in the Individuals Module for certified family and in-home child care. Certification workers may choose to upload continuing education documentation, but are not required to do so. Workers shall enter continuing education hours in WISCCRS using the Training module.
COVID-19 Update: There was an emergency executive order in place from March through May 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic, certification agencies may choose to prorate the number of continuing education hours required in 2020, regardless of whether or not the operator was in temporary closed status during the emergency. If the certification agency chooses to prorate the number of hours required, this information should be entered in the general comments screen in WISCCRS.
This page last updated 07/2021.