The National Association for Regulatory Administration was born during a licensing seminar convened at Tulane University in June 1976. Regulators from around the nation had gathered for a lecture series by Norris E. Class, the unquestioned father of human care licensing in the United States.

In 1986, NARA sank most of its meager capital into producing a curriculum for licensing professionals, written entirely by volunteers from the organization. In 1992, NARA took an even bigger risk and began to sponsor licensing seminars that rotate annually through six regions of the U.S. and Canada.

Our mission is Consumer protection through prevention. The number of children and vulnerable adults in out-of-home care is at an all time high, and still growing. NARA intends to provide leadership and forums for broad public consideration of their protection in an era of downsizing, regulatory reform, privatization and other challenges to find effective and affordable means of consumer protection and support for an expanding human care and service industry. Among our partners are:

• providers
• consumers and their families
• regulators
• advocates
• concerned citizens
• business and religious communities
• policy-makers
• universities
• researchers
• allied professionals from the academic, technical and treatment disciplines.

Where you come in
Good human care is essential for the nation's economic and social well-being:

• Today's working families need child care and adult care for older dependent family members who cannot stay at home alone.
• Tomorrow's work-force needs the learning foundations laid in effective early care and education.
• Children in need of homes and their prospective foster and adoptive parents need sensitive and supportive professional services to find one another and to build new lives together.
• Troubled children and teens, and their families, need safe, effective services to help them find their way to responsible futures.
• Our elders, who are our emotional roots and the repository of experience and tradition by which we steer toward our future, need safe care and services geared to their special needs.
• As adults we are all only an accident, an illness or a few years away from needing adult care, either for ourselves or for a loved one. We need to know those services will stand ready when we must depend on them.

Truly, we all have a heavy stake in finding better solutions for human care and services, including their responsible regulation.