Special employment practices relating to health-care and child-care facilities.
Del. Code tit. 19, § 708
in effect(a) Definitions. — (1) “Child care facility” means any child care facility which is required to be licensed by the Department of Education, Office of Child Care Licensing.
(2) “Child-serving entity” means as defined in § 309 of Title 31.
(3) “Direct access” means the opportunity to have personal contact with persons receiving care during the course of one’s assigned duties.
(4) “Health-care facility” means any custodial or residential facility where health, nutritional or personal care is provided for persons, including long-term care facilities as defined in § 1102 of Title 16, hospitals, home health-care agencies, and adult day-care facilities.
(5) “Person seeking employment” means any person applying for employment in a health-care facility or child-care facility that affords direct access to persons receiving care at such a facility, or a person applying for licensure to operate a child-care facility.
(b) Service letter. —
(1) a. No employer who operates a health-care facility or child-care facility, or provides health, nutritional, or personal care in such a facility, shall hire any person seeking employment without obtaining 1 or more service letters regarding that person, provided such person has been previously employed. Any service letters obtained must include a service letter from the person’s current or most recent previous employer. In addition, if a person seeking employment was employed in a health-care facility or by a child-serving entity within the past 5 years, the employer must obtain a service letter from all such employers. If the person seeking employment has not been previously employed, or was self-employed, then the employer must require the person to provide letters of reference from 2 adults who are familiar with the person, but who are not relatives of the person.
b. If the prospective employer attempts to obtain a service letter from a previous employer and the previous employer fails to respond, the previous employer’s failure to respond must be documented and reported to the Department of Labor.
(c) Temporary agencies. — Any temporary agency responsible for providing temporary employees to a health-care facility or child-care facility, when such employees qualify as “persons seeking employment” for purposes of paragraph (a)(5) of this section, is considered an employer and is responsible for complying with the requirements of this section.
Source: DE Code (Official Site)URL: https://delcode.delaware.gov/title19/c007/sc01/index.htmlFetched: 10/4/2026