Originally Posted by Josiegirl:
All good ideas. 
That would certainly help cut out the troubling situations, or at least limit them. MV, do you find it does help with maintaining a good crew of dcfs?
To answer OP, I cannot remember ever asking for a potential dcfs references or questions about former providers,, other than to know if it's their childs first experiences.
I find that it has helped me. In one situation I realized that their previous provider was someone I knew, someone that had vented about a family that left owing money and was now dodging them. In all fairness the provider could have prevented the problem to begin with. The family claimed that they had been approved for subsidy, the provider enrolled them and began care without an approval letter and a month later found out that they had only applied but had not yet been approved and the provider wouldn't get back-pay. I did call the provider to confirm and provider confirmed it was the same family. I looked her up on our court site and she had a couple of charges but the ones that worries me were two incidences of writing bad checks. I also called our local subsidy office to check the status of her application and she was still in the application wait list after having told me that she had been approved just as she had to the other provider. I would have still gone through the tour had she not also lied to me but I canceled it and let her know that I had checked her application status. She told me that would pay me upfront until her application was approved, I told her that I'd only accept cash no checks, she blew up on me, I told her it would not be a good fit and hung up. So yeah, doing at least a little research helps me IME.