In today’s world it is hard to provide for a family on one income so most of us do not have the option of staying at home to care for our infants. In fact 70 percent of us return to work.
Nationwide, only 5 percent of child-care center space is for infants up to two years old. The lack of capacity in our child-care centers forces parents to leave their infants with alternative, often very varied quality care. Organizations like Zero to Three and NAEYC are fighting to change this at the national level.
At the local level a lot can be done to change this and this is why I am writing this article, to educate you on some of the issues in early childhood education/child care and how they can be affected on a local level.
What you need to know about licensed family child-care homes:
- The providers are not trained in early childhood education. It is very easy for them to get licensed.
- There is very little oversight. Licensing visits a licensed family child-care home once every five years.
- One-third of licensed family child-care homes go out of business their first year.
- If your child is hurt or abused in a licensed family child-care home, you may find it very difficult to hire a lawyer to sue them in civil court—85 percent of licensed family child-care homes do not carry the $300K liability insurance/bond they are required to purchase.
Tips for Parents Who Leave Their Child in Licensed Family Child-Care Homes:
- Ask the provider for a copy of their liability insurance, and get a photo copy of their policy. Call the insurer and make sure it is the correct type of insurance and that it is currently active. The insurance should cover the provider running a child-care business from their home (some providers think their home owners policy will cover them but it does not). Make sure the policy has coverage for abuse, some policies don’t. If the provider does not carry insurance tell them to purchase it from day-care insurance. Call the other parents who the provider gave you as references and alert them to the provider’s lack of insurance. Parents may not know that the provider is supposed to carry insurance and may not understand the implications of provider not carrying it.
- If your child or another child gets hurt in a provider’s home, call licensing and report the incident. Follow up within a couple of days and make sure they followed up on your call.
California Department of Social Services
Orange County Regional Office
750 The City Drive, suite 250
Orange, CA 92868
(714) 703-2800
- If you suspect abuse or neglect, call the police as well as Social Services. Again, follow up and make sure they followed up on it. Always report your suspicions, that way it gets documented and if a number of incidents get reported licensing will have written dated documentation that will help them catch things quicker.
- Make sure you get all of the other parents contact information so you can alert them if you have any suspicions. Because parents drop off and pick up children at different times there is not much interaction and conversation between parents in licensed family child-care homes. You will be much more likely to catch things quicker if you are communicating regularly with each other. Keep written dated records of any incidents parents mention.
Child-Care Centers:
- Staff teachers have a minimum of twelve CE credits in early childhood education. NAEYC-certified centers require all of the teachers to be degreed.
TIP: I took four CE unit class in infants and toddlers at UCI and highly recommend that class for new parents as well as teachers. It was a thirteen-week class, two nights a week 6:30–9 p.m. As part of this course you are required to do observations; I was able to get permission from a number of Irvine centers to do observations at their facilities, which gave me an opportunity to spend a lot of time observing their infant and toddler rooms.
