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Home > TAKE ACTION > Advocate for Mentoring > Background Checks >

Background Checks: Reform the System and Protect Your Mentees

Legislative Goal:

To secure passage for the Child Protection Improvements Act of 2009 in the House and Senate. These bills would create a permanent successor to MENTOR's existing SafetyNET background checks pilot that would be available to ALL organizations that work with young people. SafetyNET provides mentoring organizations with access to nationwide FBI fingerprint searches at a cost of $18 and with a 3-5 day turnaround time. The bills would addresses current problems with our nationwide background check system, which include: lack of access to nationwide checks, high cost, and often-lengthy response time.

Latest Action:

April 23, 2009: With the Child Protection Improvements Act (H.R. 1469) now introduced in the House, we need your help in increasing support for this legislation.
We need your help in gaining cosponsors and supporters in the House. This bipartisan bill, introduced by Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Mike Rogers (R-MI), and John Conyers (D-MI) builds on efforts made in the 110th Congress to present a solid piece of legislation incorporating the views of different aspects of society from the FBI to states rights groups to the EEOC, but most importantly- the views of those seeing the critical need to protect today’s children.

As you know, this bill would allow youth-serving organizations access to FBI background checks on potential volunteers and employees (in short, it would create a permanent successor to Safety NET). Currently, very few states allow access to this information, and over the past five years, data has proven just how important this information is to ensuring the suitability of volunteers and employees who will be in direct contact with children.

Please click here to contact your Representatives and ask for their co-sponsorship of H.R. 1469.

The Senate is working out a compromise to introduce the House language in the Senate. Currently, there is a bill which was introduced by Sen. John Ensign, S. 163, with older language, which we fear will not make it out of the Judiciary Committee because it does not contain vital compromises agreed to by various stakeholders in the last Congress. While we are extremely grateful to Sen. Ensign for his concern for children and interest in the issue, we are hoping that he will work with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to introduce the House language in the Senate.

We will continue to work with both Senators to see this come to fruition. Once it is introduced, we would like to see the House and Senate Judiciary Committees act on the legislation as soon as possible.