Twenty-eight laws. Most require no check.

The National Child Protection Act names three populations: children, the elderly, and individuals with disabilities. They are counted here separately, and deliberately not added together. A large share of adults over 65 also report a disability, so any single total would double-count.

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2024 estimates; CDC, BRFSS 2022 (published July 2024).

The figures below describe employment in elementary and secondary schools, preschool teaching and direct care, alongside a separate measure of formal volunteering. The survey estimated that 75.7 million people age 16 and older volunteered through organizations between September 2022 and September 2023. These figures are shown separately, not combined into a count of people with trusted access. They cover different periods, can overlap, and do not establish that everyone counted serves children, older adults or people with disabilities.

Not every volunteer serves these three populations; the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that in 2015 about one volunteer in four served mainly an educational or youth service organization. Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; Pew Research Center; PHI; U.S. Census Bureau and AmeriCorps, Volunteering and Civic Life in America.

Only in specific roles and programs, not for every league, church or camp. Under the National Child Protection Act of 1993 and the Volunteers for Children Act of 1998, organizations that provide care or care placement services can qualify as “qualified entities” and request a national fingerprint-based check; those Acts do not themselves require one, and they shield an organization from damages based only on its failure to run one. Federal rules do require checks of some volunteers, in child care covered by the federal child care rules, Defense Department child and youth programs and Medicare hospices, and state laws may also require checks. Two major screening mandates in federal law are the Adam Walsh Act, for prospective foster and adoptive parents (with child abuse and neglect registry checks on the other adults in the home), and the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act, for staff of licensed, regulated, registered or CCDBG-subsidized child care providers. Both are conditions states must meet to receive funds under those programs.

Sources: National Child Protection Act of 1993, 34 U.S.C. §40101 et seq.; OJJDP, Guidelines for the Screening of Persons Working With Children, the Elderly, and Individuals With Disabilities in Need of Support (NCJ 167248, 1998), p. 5.

Why can a person disqualified in one state be hired in another? Because disqualifying rules differ from state to state, and a check or clearance does not automatically carry over to another employer or state, even though criminal records are shared nationally through the FBI’s Interstate Identification Index. The Act sets no national list of disqualifying offenses, so fifty states make fifty determinations, and nothing carries a verified identity or a screening record across a state line. Information that exists but cannot move is functionally information that does not exist.

Does closing the gap need new legislation? No. The National Child Protection Act already directs the Attorney General to encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the use of the best technology available in conducting background checks (34 U.S.C. §40102(c)(2)). That duty, written in 1993, names no particular technology. In 2018 Congress also ordered a national check program for qualified care organizations, to be fully implemented within a year; the rule to run it was proposed in August 2023 and is still not final. The system needs no new law to work, but it would help if the President directed the Attorney General to finish that 2018 program; FComply intends to compete to be one of the designated entities that run its checks. Identity-first verification exists today; continuous monitoring through the FBI’s Rap Back service is open only to authorized agencies; and what carries from one organization to the next is the verified identity, since each state and organization decides which checks it accepts.