When parents look into making sure their children are going to a nice facility for daycare there are several things that they like to look at. One important measure is security. Another is the amount of children per adult.
Other factors include, but are not limited to, schedule, field trips, and dress code. One remaining concern that some parents overlook is who is watching their children. After all, there are procedures for hiring that should safeguard children from the wrong kinds of people. Right?
Most States Don't Require Due Diligence in Childcare Hiring
The following may come as a surprise for residents of the following states, but it's the norm.
New York and West Virginia only require state background checks, possibly offering criminals the opportunity to move from another state and work with their children. Arkansas doesn't require fingerprinting. Neither does Kansas, Kentucky, Vermont, or Virginia. Alabama, Connecticut, and Delaware don't require childcare centers to check if a potential employee is a sex offender.
While the above states may seem like exceptions, the website naccrra.org, which is the online source for the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies, notes that in the US only 45 states require a name-based records check for in house daycare centers, meaning that the remaining don't have to do anything when hiring someone except file the proper tax paperwork. With larger childcare centers, 50 states require this, but these 50 include 2 lesser thought of areas- Washington, DC and the Department of Defense.
Going a step further, the following background checks are performed with even less care:
- federal fingerprint check: 26 states
- state fingerprint check: 31 states
- child abuse registry: 45 states
- sex offender registry: 16 states
A registered sex offender can apply to work at a daycare in 67% of the United States and not worry about it coming up!
What Would be Reasonable for Daycare Safety?
Chuck Thompson of Macon, Georgia, was quoted in a June 30, 2010 Macon.com article, "Background Checks Scant for GA Day Care Teachers," as saying that “Day care workers and even their spouses should have criminal background checks."
And it would be hard to find a parent who disagrees. After all, would it matter how good a daycare provider is if he or she was living with a person who had been charged with kidnapping or contributing to the delinquency of a minor? For most, it would matter a great deal because while that provider may change a diaper in record time, he or she has executed poor judgment elsewhere.
Will Daycare Standards Raise?
Daycare centers will make a difference if the clientele they wish to keep make them do so. The truth is that most facilities are simply a profit and loss business looking to make money, and a federal background check is an added expense, extending a center's marginal costs. But don't let the word "expense" make it sound expensive. Fingerprint checks take about a week and cost an average of $21.
There are exceptions to this, of course. The First United Methodist Church Learning Center in DeRidder, Louisiana goes beyond the state requirement and pays an extra $9 to perform a federal background check on all employees. For facilities like this one, parents can drop off their loved ones with the added sense of security that their children will be safe from predators trying to get close to their kids by taking on a role with so much authority.
But some facilities feel that this is too much to ask and allocate the $9 elsewhere.
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