25 June 2009 the law (Senate Bill 22) that requires home health agencies to conduct criminal background checks on their current and prospective employees came into effect in Kentucky. Kentucky was preceded by some other states, like Tennessee and Minnesota, who were prompter to have passed similar laws.

The law making background check compulsory for employees of home health agencies also covers other personal service businesses whose employees are being sent to peform their duties inside of private residences. The law imposes penalty for hiring any person with a history of violent abuse, drugs or sex related crime convictions.

Among the other of one hundred and one bills that had been passed earlier this spring during the General Assembly regular session and waited to be enacted in June, is also a Senat Bill 148 mandating criminal background checks for members of school site-based councils, whose memberships to site-based school counsel were not regulated in any way at all previously. Prior to 25 June anyone could have been a member, and you even didn’t have to be Kentucky citizen to be elected. You only had to be a parent of a student studying at that school. Now this evident legal loophole is closed and people with serious past convictions will be banned. Further on all council members are required to submit to fingerprint based background checks, which is the highest accuracy type of the background screening leaving practically no chance for compromising the results. Old laws used to regulate membership in school boards only.

Among the other important laws pertinent to both public and personal safety is a H.B. 315 that prohibits sex offenders who are registered in public records from accessing and using social networking websites like MySpace, Facebook, and other, whose terms of use allow users who are children or who are yet not of legal age.