Wisconsin Department of Children and Families - Division of Early Care and Education
Bureau of Early Care Regulation
Child Care Certification Policy Manual
Certification agencies / workers may receive several complaints against a certified operator about the same concern(s) or a complaint related to a self-reported incident. The agency may enter subsequent related complaints/incidents into WISCCRS and may choose to attach the subsequent complaint(s) to the “Primary Complaint” or incident. The related complaint or incident record(s) will not have a separate record for the investigation and investigation details (including site visits or violations), as these will be documented under the “Primary” complaint/incident record.
Certification workers are responsible for making a determination whether or not multiple complaints or an incident and complaint should be designated as “related” to one another. Certification workers may consider the following scenarios or examples as “related”:
A report from a parent and a report from CPS with the same allegations may be “related”.
If a referral to CPS results in CPS later contacting the certification agency to inform the agency that the referral has been screened-in and the certified operator (or other individual subject to the Background Check Law) is or will be under investigation, the call from CPS should also be entered as a second, related complaint (see Note in section 2.3). However, if the certified operator calls the certification worker to report that s/he is under investigation by CPS this is a “self report” and, therefore, should not be entered as a complaint in WISCCRS.
Multiple people filing the same complaint / allegation(s) may be “related”.
An operator’s self-report of a child’s injury followed by a parent complaint may be “related”.
It is possible more than one individual may file a complaint regarding the same incident / allegation(s), however, when one complainant shares additional information that suggests the possibility of additional violations not reported by the previous complainant(s) this may or may not be considered related. In these cases, the certification worker must make a determination whether or not to designate the multiple / subsequent complaints as “related” and may choose to designate the more expansive complaint as the “primary complaint”.
If multiple complaints are filed against the same operator but the allegations are different, these shall be entered as separate complaints in WISCCRS although the investigations can be done at the same time.
See the WISCCRS User Guide – Complaints/Incidents for more information regarding related complaints.
This page last updated 01/07/2019.