About The State Board for the Certification of Residential Child Care Program Administrators
The State Board for the Certification of Residential Child Care Program Administrators (hereinafter “the Board”) is charged with investigating and acting upon complaints against certified residential child care program administrators only. If your complaint is against a health care practitioner other than a residential child care program administrator, please contact this office for the proper addressee.
As a point of information, Maryland law states “A person who acts in good faith and within the scope of the jurisdiction of the Board is not civilly liable for giving information to the Board or otherwise participating in its activities.”
In order to protect children who reside in Maryland’s residential child care programs, the Board urges you to file your complaint. Should you have a complaint regarding the quality of care rendered in a residential child care program, you must also file a complaint with program’s licensing agency. For programs licensed by the:
If you do not know the licensing agency, please contact the Group Homes Hotline at 1-866-718-5496.
Use the Complaint Form and be sure that you fill it out as completely as possible. Where the information is requested is not known, the complainant should so state. Please type or print legibly when completing this form. If there is more than one complaint, please use a separate form for each complaint. In order to expedite the processing of your complaint, please be sure that all names, addresses and telephone numbers are correct for all persons named in the complaint.
You should be aware that the Board normally forwards a copy of the complaint to the program administrator and requests that s/he responds to the issues in the complaint. If there are any reasons why you feel this complaint should not be shared with the program administrator, please indicate on a separate statement attached to the complaint.
The Board will review the complaint and the program administrator’s response and will determine whether further investigation is warranted. If the complaint is referred for investigation, the investigation may take ninety (90) days or more. Thereafter the Board reviews the report, after which it may conduct such further investigations, as it deems necessary. If the Board determines to bring charges against the program administrator and to hold a hearing, sufficient advance notice will be give to the program administrator to enable him/her to prepare a defense. Therefore, in most cases, there is considerable time lapse between the filing of the complaint and final action by the Board. In all cases, the Board will advise the complainant of the action taken when a final determination has been made.
