Pennsylvania’s Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL), with technical assistance from the State Capacity Building Center within the Office of Child Care Projects at the federal level, has embarked on an initiative to rewrite Pennsylvania’s child care certification regulations. Once completed, the new regulations will:
- Increase alignment with quality improvement
- Promote greater equity; and
- Decrease burden experienced by child care providers
Over the last 9 months, OCDEL has worked with an Ad-Hoc Subcommittee, which is made up of stakeholders such as family, group and center child care providers and other subject matter experts to co-create a proposed draft certification regulations.
This is not a formal public comment period and is meant to be an extra level of engagement with the Early Childhood Education community. OCDEL wishes to keep the ECE community informed; provide transparency and build trust in the process; offer the opportunity to react to the drafted proposed certification regulations; and build support for the changes.
Information related to the project can be found here and includes:,
OCDEL encourages all Pennsylvania child care and early learning providers, along with any individuals invested in our child care system, to review the current proposed draft certification regulations and provide feedback by August 19, 2022.
Proposed Changes in the Current Draft Certification Regulations
The proposed draft certification regulations are divided into five subchapters. Some high-level proposed changes are touched upon below, but do not include all:
- Move from three categories of regulation (Family, Group, and Center) to two categories of regulation (Family Child Care Homes and Child Care Centers)
- Additional definitions were added to clarify intent and allow for more consistency
- Enhances information needed to be shared between the family and the program in the family handbook
- Strengthens support for a child with a developmental delay, disability, or special health care need and for families with a language preference other than English
- Staffing qualifications have been aligned to the Career Pathway
- Staff titles updated to include specific focus on teaching staff
- Requires the entire workforce to add information to the PD registry
- Curriculum and Lesson Plan requirements added
- Added emphasis on business practices and goals
- Clarification of initial provisional and provisional certificates of compliance (CoC)
