Learn About Volunteers and Visitors for Your Program

Volunteers and visitors are great assets to child care programs as parent, caregiver, and community involvement has long been a cornerstone of child development. Volunteers and visitors can play a critical role in a child’s education and their presence and involvement is often encouraged by child care programs.

The requirements and guidelines for volunteer program staff and visitors are outlined below. Programs must evaluate how volunteers and visitors are used in a program to determine whether those individuals need to fulfill certain requirements before volunteering or visiting a program.

Volunteers serving as program staff: Providing direct care or supervision of children

Volunteers are considered program staff if they work in a child care center or group child care home whose activities involve the direct care or supervision of children. Volunteers serving as program staff may be counted in ratio.

Requirements

Volunteers who serve as program staff must:

• Be age 16 years or older
• Complete a background check
• Submit an adult physical
• Take the required health and safety training within 3 months of the date they were hired
• Complete new hire orientation and annual trainings of program policies, plans, and procedures, including multi-hazard training
• Take ongoing professional development training that equals at least 1 percent of the total annual hours worked

Visitors

Visitors are different than volunteers, as they do not and may not provide direct care to children. They also don’t have the opportunity for unsupervised access to children. Examples of visitors include:

• A grandparent reading a story to their grandchild’s class
• A parent setting up materials for an art project
• A local fire department coming to give a presentation of fire safety
• College students who passively observe a classroom as a requirement of their class

Requirements

Visitors are not required to submit health forms or other documents and do not need to complete background checks or trainings.