Background checks for babysitting co-op

A babysitting co-op organized by friends allowed me to save money and get connected with other mothers. We met monthly to tally how many hours each of us watched children using a point system. As the mom of two young boys, I also enjoyed how the group traded recipes and ideas.

Soon, other mothers who heard about us asked to join. We said yes, but ran into an interesting problem as our group grew. We didn't know the new women or their husbands as well as our original close-knit members. Could we trust them with our children? When a co-op member, the wife of a sheriff's deputy, suggested criminal background checks for each of us, many of the mothers embraced the idea. I felt a little taken aback. Although I had nothing to hide, it was the principle, a sense of lost privacy. I wondered what would happen if someone had an embarrassing minor record. Many youthful offenders move on to lead law-abiding, exemplary lives. A drinking infraction long ago does not equate to child abuser today.

Some of the other mothers argued that it was an individual's decision to agree to the background checks if they wanted to join, or simply walk away. I came around, eventually, to the idea. My career at the time helped convince me.

Working part-time for a daily newspaper, I checked sheriff arrest reports for my small county. During three years, I read hundreds of reports about strangers. But two separate accounts were different. They listed the names of acquaintances, people I knew as small town neighbors who might have asked me at the grocery story about area babysitters. Alcoholism or domestic abuse hid inside their family's houses. These were records that parents deciding whether to trust a neighbor with their child would not see, or read about in the newspaper, because the incidents were not headline material. I know that a name showing up on a police report doesn't mean that person is bad or automatically an unfit caretaker. But I also have read too often about children harmed because of abuse in the home, even if they only witness it. Our kids' protection has to come first.

The members of our babysitting co-op worked out an arrangement with local law enforcement to do the background checks, after each adult signed a consent form. One juvenile record did surface, but a sheriff's employee soon diffused it as nothing of concern after a quiet inquiry. I later learned that youth organizations such as Scouts and 4-H now routinely require criminal background checks for adult volunteers. Yes, these groups and our co-op might have turned away a few candidates who scoffed about their privacy. There's also the possibility that people with no prior convictions could still render harm. Though, the extra scrutiny deflects some of the risk.

And so it happened, after a move four years ago to Eastern Washington, that I was asked again as a children's volunteer at church to fill out a form for a criminal background check. This time I didn't flinch. If anything, I felt a little tug of relief.