The fingerprinting process can be stressful for caregivers and their families for reasons that have nothing to do with their ability to provide safe, supportive care for youth.

Make this process easier for potential caregivers by providing quick and accessible fingerprinting services and recordkeeping to ensure you never have to fingerprint the same person twice.

How to do this

Expand your fingerprinting options

Use portable or in-office methods. Invest in mobile fingerprinting units that you can bring to a potential caregiver’s home, particularly in rural areas or with homebound adults. Combine this with other same-day information collection so caregivers don’t have to coordinate fingerprinting around their own schedule and resources. If you can’t do mobile fingerprinting, provide fingerprinting at your office when kin are already attending a meeting. Don’t use police stations, which can be frightening for kin and involve long wait times.

Contract with community-based locations. If you can’t do portable or in-office fingerprinting methods, contract with community-based services (like UPS or FedEx) that offer evening and weekend appointments. Help kin caregivers make an appointment that works for their schedule, and help with childcare and transportation. Make sure they don’t have to pay and that the vendors accept expanded forms of identification recommended by the FBI Compact Council.

Have a policy for exceptions. People who don’t have fingerprints due to age, exposure to chemicals, or missing fingers are often forced to try and “fail” the fingerprinting process twice before getting a name-based alternative. This is dehumanizing and delays the approval process. Create a policy for both kin and non-kin foster family homes that you can conduct a name-based background check for these people instead.

Have clear turnaround times

Track how long it takes to collect, process, and evaluate fingerprint-based checks. Evaluate your policies and practices to figure out how to speed results. It is possible to collect, receive, and evaluate fingerprint-based background check results within hours. Aim for processing fingerprint-based results and evaluating fingerprint-based history within 1 day each (though there may sometimes be unusual circumstances).

Plan for future needs

Fingerprint absent or emerging adults later, and only when necessary. Approve kin right away. You’re not required to conduct fingerprint-based checks on other adults in the home for federal approval. If you’re a tribe, or your agency chooses to fingerprint others for other reasons, don’t delay placement while these adults are absent from the household (like if they’re deployed in the military, away at school, or about to turn 18). You can arrange their fingerprinting when they’re coming back or when they officially become an adult.

Use purpose codes to avoid re-fingerprinting. The FBI only lets you reuse fingerprints for the same purpose as the original collection, so include a “purpose code” when you initially collect fingerprints. Purpose Code X for foster care lets you reuse fingerprints across child welfare needs like kinship care, adoption, and future household changes, such as when an adult child returns home from college. This code isn’t just for emergencies. Use it to avoid unnecessary re-fingerprinting, reduce costs, and prevent errors.

This strategy in action

Minnesota’s contract for community-based fingerprinting requires 1 location every 35 miles across the state, along with weekend and evening hours.

In Utah, fingerprints can be used across multiple agencies, such as foster care and school employment.

In Arizona, a Fingerprint Clearance Card allows the same person to share their cleared fingerprint history with multiple state agencies.

Louisiana and Utah have goals to review fingerprinting results on the same day.

All jurisdictions can follow the list of identification caregivers can bring to their fingerprinting appointment, found in the kin licensing forms and templates.

Resources