<div>> 9. Does Idaho need to tighten its day-care regulations?</div>
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<div>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.</div>
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<div>I absolutely believe that day care regulations need to be tightened. </div>
<div>More importantly, the current regulations need to be observed and enforced regularly. </div>
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<div><font color="#000099">c. The Department shall obtain a criminal history check on only those applicants, <br><br>owners, operators, employees or volunteers who have direct contact with the <br><br>children in care and on all other individuals twelve (12) years of age or older who <br>
<br>have unsupervised direct contact with children in care.<br></font></div>
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<div>I have worked in Moscow daycare and only one has ever required a background check, the UI.</div>
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<div>08. <font color="#000099">all family day care homes <br><br>caring for six (6) or fewer children are not required to have a basic day care license or <br><br>certification.</font><br></div>
<div>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?</div>
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<div>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.</div>
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<div>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. <strong>But the first</strong> <strong> would be to put together a board of Child Care experts and listen to what they have to say!! </strong>They have been talking a lot lately and no one is listening.</div>