Improve child care regulations
Choosing child care can be a difficult, uncertain decision for parents. They deserve assurance that day cares are adequately regulated and that information about inspections is easily accessible.
Neither is the case now.
Reporter Kelsey Ryan documented in Sunday’s Eagle how day care regulations in Kansas are lacking and have been blamed in the deaths and injuries of children. Among her findings:
▪ Home day care providers are required to report deaths, but not injuries.
▪ Day care providers are not required to have insurance, nor are they required to tell parents that they have no insurance.
▪ The number of day care inspectors has gone from 112 to 90 in the past four years.
▪ The state has no estimate of the number of day cares that are unlicensed. Also, the state has no penalty for people who operate unlicensed day cares.
Child care regulations have actually improved in Kansas. In 2010, the Legislature approved the first major changes in child care standards in more than three decades.
That law requires all licensed day cares to have an annual inspection. It also requires health and safety training on safe-sleep practices, child development, CPR and first aid.
But gaps remain. For example, though the Kansas Department of Health and Environment now posts the results of complaint-based inspections on its website, the search form is difficult to locate, and details of the complaint and the investigation aren’t available. Parents have to submit an open records request to obtain that information.
How is that helpful?
There is a balance that lawmakers and regulators must strike. They need to provide suitable oversight of child care without creating an excessive burden that unnecessarily drives up costs and reduces the number of available child care options, which are limited already.
But lives can be at stake. From 2007 to 2015, 45 children died in Kansas child cares, according to the KDHE. Many more children have been injured, including Lana Aronis, who had to have her left foot and part of her leg amputated after a lawnmower accident at a Wichita day care.
Lawmakers and the state have a duty to try to safeguard children and provide parents with adequate and accessible information about day cares.
As Blake Shuart, a Wichita attorney who has represented families of children who died or were injured in day cares, argued: “Our Legislature and executive branch will stop at nothing to protect the futures of unborn children, but it’s about time they place equal priority on the futures of those who have already left the womb.”
This story was originally published August 16, 2016 at 12:05 AM with the headline "Improve child care regulations."