A Home for Every ChildA Home for Every Child - Washington State Fingerprinting Infrastructure Modernization - The Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) requests $200,000 through the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) Fingerprinting Infrastructure Modernization for Child Welfare funding opportunity to accelerate statewide modernization of fingerprinting and background check infrastructure. The 24-month project will serve applicants across all 39 Washington counties, including relatives and kinship caregivers, foster and adoptive families, licensed child care providers, group home providers, and other individuals requiring fingerprint-based criminal history checks through DCYF programs. Washington’s current fingerprinting process creates avoidable delays in caregiver approval, licensing, and placement. Applicants rely substantially on contracted fingerprinting vendors with varying appointment availability, hours, capacity, and geographic accessibility. Applicants currently wait an average of approximately three days for a fingerprinting appointment. After fingerprints are collected, results are routed through another state agency before becoming available to DCYF, adding approximately three additional days. Together, these steps can add approximately six days to the background check process, creating a significant barrier for timely kinship and emergency placements. DCYF will use the grant to support two coordinated modernization efforts. First, DCYF will complete and deploy an enterprise Background Check System integrating fingerprint-related data, automated workflows, FBI criminal history processing, suitability determinations, licensing and approval activities, and emergency placement requirements. Second, DCYF will procure and integrate outsourced fingerprinting services that provide reliable statewide access while the agency prepares to transition fingerprinting operations in-house by July 2028. The project will include a statewide gap analysis, technical and security integration, testing, implementation, staff training, performance measurement, and development of a sustainable transition plan. The project is expected to reduce fingerprint turnaround time by as much as six days and return fingerprint results within minutes for approximately 80 percent of applicants. DCYF will measure appointment availability, time to fingerprint collection, time from collection to availability of results, geographic access, administrative handoffs, and effects on caregiver approval, licensing, and emergency placement timelines. These improvements will help children move more quickly into safe, stable, and permanent family settings while strengthening compliance, reducing administrative burden, and improving access in rural and underserved communities. The federal investment will leverage approximately $700,000 already secured from Microsoft for development of the enterprise Background Check System, as well as additional state resources supporting the broader modernization initiative. The ACF award will provide critical funding to complete and integrate the system and fingerprinting service infrastructure needed to establish a sustainable statewide model and support DCYF’s transition to agency-operated fingerprinting by July 2028.
