The Backup Plan
11.Eye-Opening Admissions…
It’s so easy to jump to the wrong conclusions.
Imagine receiving a call from your best friend…from jail…and she tells you she’s been arrested for a DUI. Your mind would start racing and, despite knowing that she’s a very responsible person who would never do such a thing, you might even begin speculating about the details that landed her there. Based on assumptions, you may even be shocked and feel disappointed that she’d ever do such a thing.
Once she begins to explain the events that led to her arrest, they turn out to be much different than what you imagined. She was enjoying a glass of wine while out to dinner with her husband, who did not drink any alcohol. Just shortly after she finished her second glass, her husband became violently ill and she had to drive him home. She was not originally planning on driving, and although she knew she had two glasses of wine, she felt fine and didn’t worry about being a threat on the road. When a police officer pulled her over for not fully stopping at a stop sign, he discovered she was just barely over the legal intoxication limit and arrested her.
Now, this incident could’ve happened to a number of us at some point in our lives. It’s easy for others to jump to false conclusions and make assumptions without knowing all the facts. Occasionally, daycare providers with good intentions will also make poor choices when caring for children. They are human, after all, and these poor choices can be due to many factors including juggling too many things at once, not being fully present in the moment, or simply just making a decision or taking action without thinking things through. Either way, there are times when their actions can jeopardize the safety of your child. Seeing the whole picture and understanding the details surrounding each event will help you determine if it truly was an accident or if negligence was involved. After reading these stories, what conclusion would you have jumped to and how would you have reacted before hearing all the relevant details for each event?
Home Alone
A home daycare provider decided to take her group of 8 children to a puppet show at a local park. The kids would typically line up at the front door of her home where their shoes were kept, and when everyone was ready, they would all go out together and get into the van. On this particular day, the children had been playing outside in the backyard and one of the toddlers had left his shoes in the sandbox. The provider asked him to go get his shoes as she busily continued to help the other kids put on sunblock, tie shoes and fill water bottles. Realizing that the show was about to begin, she hurried the kids out the door, into the van and quickly buckled them into their car seats. She pulled out of the driveway and started to drive down the street when she remembered the little boy who had gone to get his shoes. She pulled the van over, and after a quick head count, she realized the child was missing! She immediately panicked and quickly turned around to go get him. That one minute ride back to the house felt like hours!
As she pulled into the driveway, her mind was racing with thoughts of all the horrible things that could happen to a toddler that is left alone. She jumped out of her van and raced to the door. With trembling hands, she fumbled with the keys, unlocked the door, pushed it open and there he was! He looked up at her with a blank expression on his face, shoes still in his hands. She grabbed and hugged him so tightly, and although she was relieved to find he was ok, she knew she would never forget that feeling of terror that coursed through her body when she first discovered he was missing!
Home daycare providers can get so caught up in doing so many things at once (and sometimes in a hurry), that they can forget the most important rule in daycare which is to count heads before and after any transition time and also in between. Again, an incident that started out as a great idea and fun outing for the kids could have turned into tragedy in a second simply because the provider was being pulled in so many different directions at once, and not being mindful and present in all of them. How does your daycare provider handle the pressure of a chaotic day or does the chaos at times get the best of your provider?
Are All Buckles Buckled?
Has this ever happened to you… You’re driving along without a care in the world and then turn a sharp corner and whoops! your child’s car seat in the back topples forward or off to the side? It’s a horrible feeling and it’s happened to me more than once with my own children. Suddenly, you’re left thinking, Who the heck undid that seatbelt and why didn’t I notice that it was unbuckled? It’s one thing when it happens to you as a parent, and another when it happens to a daycare provider, but either way it does occasionally happen…
A teacher was doing her daily van run which involved picking up only one child from that particular school. When the teacher picked up the little girl, she securely buckled her into the car seat containing a four-harness belt buckle. She then shut the door, got back in, buckled herself up and drove away. As soon as she made the first turn, a loud noise came from the back, followed by the little girl’s cry. The teacher, alarmed and unsure of what had just occurred, quickly pulled over to check on the child. When she opened the passenger door, she was shocked to discover the car seat which the little girl was still fastened to, had tipped forward and was now leaning against the back of the front seat. The teacher was confused how this could’ve happened, then realized that even though she had securely buckled the child into the car seat, she had not double-checked that the car seat was buckled into the car. Someone, perhaps one of the older kids that had been transported in that same van earlier, must have unbuckled it. Thankfully, the little girl was alright with no apparent bumps or bruises but the teacher was shaking badly and close to tears. She safely and securely buckled the child’s car seat into place and continued to the daycare center.
After they arrived, she informed the director of what had happened, who double-checked the little girl to make sure she was alright, then called and informed the child’s parents. This incident was reported to licensing, who came out to the center to investigate and determine if any negligence was involved.
Licensing determined that maltreatment was involved in this case due to the fact that the teacher did not do all of the required safety checks prior to transporting the child. Since it was a first time offense, the teacher was able to continue working with children, but a secondary occurrence would disqualify her from working with children ever again. The center re-examined and enforced their policies regarding their van drivers and more safety checks were implemented before and after each van run. Unfortunately, the parents of this child were very distraught over the situation, and pulled their child out of the center immediately.
It’s important to remember that these events can happen to anyone, but when they happen to a childcare provider, they are looked at with more scrutiny. Our intention for sharing these stories is not only to help make parents more aware of the right questions to ask and the important things to look for in a quality childcare program, but also to remind parents that daycare providers are human, and accidents will still occasionally happen. Depending on the circumstances of an incident, and the severity of what took place, a parent might consider giving the provider and the center another chance.
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It’s important to always research providers before making your final choice. Other than regular license renewal visits, which can occur anywhere from every 1 to 5 years depending on the state, a licensor will only check on a provider unexpectedly if a complaint has been made against them. All findings and violations occurring from visits are public record and can be viewed online for all licensed providers. When searching for daycare, you can start by googling either the center’s name or the home daycare owner’s name.
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The One Left Behind
One fall day, a class of 18 preschoolers returned from their class field trip to their daycare center just in time for their afternoon nap. When they arrived, one teacher assisted the children out of the van, while the other teacher assisted them into the building. Once they were all inside, the teachers helped them wash up and find their cots, which were already laid out in preparation for their nap. Within ten minutes, all of the children were laying down quietly on their cots. At this time one of the teachers started to count heads to make sure she had all children accounted for. To her surprise and disbelief, she realized a child was missing, which also explained the one cot on the floor that remained empty. Immediately, panic erupted among the teachers as they frantically began to search the bathrooms, and every square inch of the classroom…
Meanwhile, another teacher was returning from her lunch break. As she pulled into the parking lot, she thought she saw a head moving inside one of the daycare vans parked in front of the building. After parking her car, she ran over to the van, only to validate her suspicions that a child was indeed sitting in the van all alone, with the doors locked! As she raced inside to get the van keys, she crossed paths with a frantic preschool teacher on her way out to check the van. At that moment, they realized from the look on each other’s faces what had occurred. Both teachers raced over to the van, quickly unlocked the door and found the four year old child, still buckled into his car seat, sitting there confused and alone.
His teacher, breathing a heavy sigh of relief, unbuckled the child with trembling hands and hugged him tightly. The child was fine, but the teacher was sick to her stomach and on the brink of tears. She couldn’t believe she had allowed something like this to happen. She had worked at this daycare for nearly six years, and had always prided herself on her commitment to the safety of the children in her care and the quality of her performance she strived so hard to deliver each day. She brought the child in to his classroom and laid him down on his cot. At this time, she realized the severity of what had just occurred and felt the weight of the situation bearing down on her. As she tried to make sense of it all, she was suddenly overcome with the feeling of nausea, and ran to the staff bathroom and vomited. She was excused for the rest of the day as she was in no condition to continue working.
The child’s parents were contacted, and this incident was also reported to licensing. This incident haunted this teacher for months and it was an eye-opening example to all the other staff of how failing to follow such a simple, yet crucial procedure, could lead to a catastrophe. Although the teacher did perform a headcount, which is ultimately how she discovered a child was missing, she did the headcount after the children were inside, rather than counting kids as they left the van and again as they entered the building. A sleeping or small child can easily be missed during a quick visual check of a van or bus. In this case, doing a headcount within a ten minute period led the teacher to find the missing child safely, but sometimes even ten minutes can be too long.
There are many tragic stories of children in daycare that have been forgotten and left behind either outside on the playground or in locked vans or buses. In many cases, children were found once providers realized they were missing, but in other instances, providers never noticed a child was missing until that child’s parent came to pick them up. Headcounts should be done before children enter the building, as they enter the building, shortly after they are in the classroom, and periodically throughout the day. Many incidents occurred due to the neglect of this very simple but effective procedure.
Ask your daycare provider about their headcount policy and the procedures they follow for keeping track of children leaving and re-entering the building. Familiarize yourself with the routes that children will take from the playground and the parking lot to the classroom, and ask questions about any unclear procedures until you are clear and comfortable with this process. Until you are at ease with the effectiveness of these policies, you may consider calling to check on your child when their class returns from an outing or a field trip. As children come and go throughout the day, providers need to be extremely diligent in their practices of noticing and documenting these changes.
The percentage of children that are overlooked or forgotten is very minor in comparison to the number of children that are accounted for, loved and cared for by providers each day; however, it’s understandable that a parent would feel uneasy about their child’s safety and well-being while in someone else’s care. The number one rule in daycare is that children be supervised and accounted for at all times. There is no fool-proof way to know that your child will always be safe and accounted for but knowing your child attends a daycare that has policies and procedures in place to prevent such incidents from happening in the first place is a good starting point.
The Backup Plan
One of the hardest parts of being a home daycare provider is juggling your home and daycare responsibilities. Providers may miss many personal family events such as school functions, sporting events and teacher conferences due to their daycare responsibilities, but nothing is worse than when parents change plans at the last minute and providers find themselves in situations where tough decisions must be made.
A daycare provider was placed in a tough predicament when a parent called at the last minute to say that she would be late picking up her kids that day. The provider explained to this parent that since she had just recently moved to the area, she didn’t have anyone else to help pick up her own children from school, and she also did not have enough room in her car for all the kids to safely fit. The parent replied that there was nothing she could do about it, but that she would come as soon as possible. After trying unsuccessfully to figure out what to do, the provider made the decision to put all the daycare kids in her available car seats, while buckling her own two children together in one seat for the short ride home.
On the way home, after picking up the kids, the provider failed to stop completely at a stop sign and was pulled over by the police. All the kids were taken out of her car, and driven by the police to the police station to wait for their parents to pick them up. The children were scared, and the parents that were called were only told that the daycare provider had endangered their children. She had made a split second decision with few options to consider that turned into one of the worst experiences of her life.
Parents need to consider the consequences of their actions and the position of the daycare provider when they change plans at the last minute or pick their children up late. Your daycare may be able to accommodate your needs most of the time, but you also need to understand that you may be leaving your provider, and consequently your child, in a bad situation where options are limited and an undesirable ending is a possibility.