Eric Weddle, writing for the Lafayette Journal & Courier has a good article on the rash of daycare deaths in Indiana and the efforts in the General Assembly to increase regulation of day cares.
There have apparently been 31 deaths at day cares since 2009 and 21 of them have been at unregulated day cares. One issue is the fact that a day care doesn’t have to be licensed if the provider is caring for less then 5 unrelated kids. Church affiliated day cares are another blind spot in the system.
I’m not sure there will be a huge appetite to do much about this problem. None of our legislators want to see kids dying at day cares. But, social services take a lot of money and that money doesn’t tend to yield a lot of immediate economic benefits. Even if we add additional rules, there has to be money for enforcement. The regulatory agencies would have to be able to detect a day care and know when it changes in a way that brings it within the scope of regulation.
Day cares in general are an unfortunate innovation and necessity of modern society. It used to be you had a parent at home or lived in and around extended family that watched after the kids while the parents worked. Of course, in times past, kids died a lot more for all kinds of reasons. So, modern society is probably more good than bad if you net it out. Still, if jobs pay enough to allow functional one income families, that probably would be optimal.
But, as to the immediate problem, my suggestion (and maybe something like this already exists) would be a registration and certification program. Create an easily searchable day care registry and an additional certification program. A family sending their kids to day care would probably be aware that the fact the day care was not on the registry was a major red flag and would have an extra level of comfort if the day care jumped the quality assurance hoops necessary to be certified. Perhaps a small extra level of information by requiring unregistered day cares have customers sign a consent form indicating that they had been advised that this was an unregistered day care and they, nevertheless, wanted to send their kids there. The disclosure could be easily ignored but you could attach some fairly brutal penalties to a violation if a kid was hurt and the parents had not signed a consent to have the kid supervised at an unregistered day care.
There is a voluntary certification program called Paths to Quality.
http://www.childcareindiana.org/childcareindiana/ptq.cfm
The City of Indianapolis is partnering with GreatSchools.org to provide information to families about early childhood programs. Eventually this could be expanded statewide.
“There have apparently been 31 deaths at day cares since 2009 and 21 of them have been at unregulated day cares.”
What percentage of day cares are unregulated?
According to the state’s Child Care Development Fund figures for January, just under 13 percent of Indiana day cares accepting vouchers were unregulated. That can be misleading, however. Unregulated child-care homes and registered ministries are the providers most likely to exceed recommended caregiver/child ratios. That places more children at risk in unsafe settings.
The Paths to Quality rating program is excellent. It began in Allen County and was adopted statewide in 2007 — perhaps the only good thing to come out of Mitch Roob’s tenure at FSSA. The problem is that quality costs money. The best care — Level 4 programs — are mostly cost-prohibitive for low-income families. Level 1 programs ensure basic health and safety needs are met but unregulated providers don’t even have to meet that bar. Often, the providers are poor women themselves, trying to bring a few dollars into the household while they watch their own children. They soon learn that the more children they watch, the more they earn.
Once the providers accept money for caring for someone else’s children, however, they are business operators. Just because their customers are poor is no reason they shouldn’t be required to meet health and safety standards.
Where is the outrage on this issue? If 31 children had died in Indiana schools since 2009, Hoosiers would be incensed. Some of the same people complaining about church-based day care regulations would be gathering torches and pitchforks If even one woman died in an abortion clinic. Yet they were silent when a toddler drowned in a baptismal font.
The problem, I suspect, is that these children were mostly from poor families. Middle- and upper-class parents see it as “not my problem.” The working poor are the least-equipped to research quality care and they are in the worst position to insist their day-care providers improve.
If we’re going to insist poor mothers work, we should be willing to support an inspection system that ensures their children don’t die or risk harm while they are working.
“If 31 children had died in Indiana schools since 2009, Hoosiers would be incensed.”
How many have died at Indiana schools since 2009? Further, what’s the risk of death at each age until 18?
How does Indiana’s per capita day care death rate compare to other states?
“If we’re going to insist poor mothers work,”
We don’t. When we shoved mothers into the workforce by virtue of taxing husband’s salaries, by de-stigmatizing illegitimacy and by filling women’s heads full of career ideas during the Women’s Lib movement, we created these horrible stresses on families.
Freedom, which knuckle hits the ground first when you walk?