[Vision2020] End of Legislative Session Summary from Rep. Trail

Angie Doe moscowresident at gmail.com
Sun Apr 6 09:21:05 PDT 2008


>   9.  Does Idaho need to tighten its day-care regulations?

I am a bit disappointed in the answer that has been provided to this
question.  It leads me to believe that people have a extremely limited idea
of what actually occurs in daycare.

I absolutely believe that day care regulations need to be tightened.
More importantly, the current regulations need to be observed and enforced
regularly.

c. The Department shall obtain a criminal history check on only those
applicants,

owners, operators, employees or volunteers who have direct contact with the


children in care and on all other individuals twelve (12) years of age or
older who

have unsupervised direct contact with children in care.

I have worked in Moscow daycare and only one has ever required a background
check, the UI.

08. all family day care homes

caring  for six (6) or fewer children are not required to have a basic day
care license or

certification.
So as long as you have 6 or less kids, you can do whatever you want with
whoever you want.  Does that seem like a good idea?

If you read our regulations you will see that the only things it discusses
is health inspection, fire inspection, and background checks.  My experience
is that the fire and health inspections only take place at the beginning of
a center opening and are not repeated on regular intervals.  Also, they are
not taking into consideration what CHILD DEVELOPMENT professionals consider
safe.  Infants can be playing with Lego's and that is not the safety they
are looking at.  We already know background checks aren't happening.

There is a lot that can be done to ensure better environments in child-care
centers.  One thing would be to have somewhat frequent surprise inspections
to see if the environment is safe and if there is appropriate staff that has
records of their background checks.  *But the first* * would be to put
together a board of Child Care experts and listen to what they have to
say!!  *They have been talking a lot lately and no one is listening.
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