This page looks at the people you elect, and the people that they in turn hire, to protect our children in licensed child care facilities. Some of these people deserve praise and appreciation, and others directness. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ March 17, 2008 As an educated guess about five percent (5%) of licensed family home child care providers gathered at 10 locations statewide Saturday March 15, 2008 to tell the Department of Early Learning (DEL) what examples of "valid" complaints they wanted parents of Washington State to have access to on the DEL website. There are about 5000 licensed family home child day cares in the state. There were a few center folks at the forums, too. Currently if parents see a valid complaint (for example, "overcapacity") on a provider, clicking on the hyperlink that says "overcapacity" does not give the parent details on the provider's "valid" for "overcapacity" event. It gives the parent real life examples but not the real life "overcapacity" results for that provider. The providers attending the Vancouver forum and others statewide voted for a third option of having the real life data associated with that complaint be there for the parents to see. DEL managers in attendance stated because of technology and the budget that cannot be done at this time. There was no expert IT person in attendance to address that issue. This author, advocate and former child care licensor disagrees. DEL has hyperlinks all over their website. It is as simple as copying text and pasting. An example DEL passed out regarding the "overcapacity" category: "Family home provider had 12 children in the licensed downstairs area of the home and eight children hiding upstairs in the unlicensed part of the home. Family homes are licensed for a maximum of 12 children." The providers at the forum were objecting to generic examples for fear a parent would believe the example was actually related to the complaint on them. Several providers objected to the examples themselves because "if a provider did this they wouldn't be licensed anymore, right?" So why even put that example down? Darcy Taylor, the supervisor out of the Vancouver office would not answer the question. The reason Ms Taylor would not answer the question is because Ms Taylor herself has not shut down licensed child care facilities that were required to have been shut down under the RCW and WAC requirements. The above (bolded) example was one of those cases. How do I know? I was the licensor of that home. For clarification there were thirteen (13) children downstairs and two of the eight upstairs were babies, in two separate bedrooms with the doors closed. The upstairs did not have the required fire escape exits. There was no assistant on site when I counted the 21 children. She was allowed to keep her license and I was removed as her licensor for recommending revocation action be taken. Licensed child care providers are rightly concerned about the perception parents in the state of Washington will have about the state of licensed care. Over the years as a licensor I had quality providers as well as Child Care Resource and Referral staff bring up their concerns about some very poor quality providers continuing to hold a license. Why? They wanted to know. Why? That answer must come now from the managers of DEL. Why? In my thirteen years as a child care licensor the agency's name changed five (5) times. Five times in thirteen years. We always had the same desk, the same phones, the same buildings, the same chairs, the same practices and the same managers (except the person at the top would change). The public was led to believe that reform had happened. Until the next round of child tragedies or deaths. Eight month old Jesse Hunt, Six month old Nathan Slater, eighteen month old Charlotte Wetzel, two year old Hailee Rhoads, eighteen month old Jaclyn Frank, eleven week old Jenna Knudtson, children (among others) we must not forget. I have known many fine family home child care providers who lovingly paid attention to the children. They don't speak up for fear of retributions and attacks that may be (and have been) made on them by the vocal few. Must parents be put in the position of having to play Russian roulette with the lives of their children when they make decisions about using family home child care? Amy Blondin, Communications Manager for DEL at the Saturday meeting did speak up for the parent voice; and spoke up for giving parents accurate information. This small percentage of the total number of providers statewide proceeded to edit out the most concerning examples to make them bland and generic. For example, "Failure to notify parents of child's injury" got changed to "Failure to complete incident report" which is very different than a provider telling a parent, "Hey, your child got hurt today." "Hailee Rhoads" is an example of what happened to that child when the provider "failed to notify parents of child's injury". Click on link: March 14, 2008 The 2008 legislative session ended yesterday. The creatively called child care center collective bargaining bill did not pass. This is a thank you moment to the Senators in Washington State. This is not a rah, rah, rah we won moment. This is a moment of appreciation to all the senators who continued to be open, thoughtful and measurably considered in weighing the information that came their way. As always this author appreciates Senator Hargrove's standing in the world and his sense of humor. Senator Kohl-Welles with the amount of pressure coming her way remained gracious and open to receiving information. Senator Holmquist brought strength, vitality and directness to this issue. Senator Eide was also straight forward, flexible and pragmatic in receiving information. This truly as it unfolded wasn't a Democratic vs Republican issue. I thank Stu Jacobson of Washington Parents for Safe Child Care for asking me to do the research on this bill and provide that information to the senators. This similar bill in 2006 simply had not been on my radar. As I read the details of the bill, wow, what a surprise. More and more secrecy has seeped in our American culture. In my opinion this was a defining moment in Washington state history. There will be many more. Though tremendous pressure was put on the senators, in my opinion, the senators were open to information, research and documentation to help them make the decision that they did. The senators are to be commended and respected. Though many citizens and parents who send their children to licensed child care were too busy to have the time and energy to get into the complexities of this issue; we who could step up to the plate and be researcher and voice for them were gratified to do so. Our Native Elders tell us the decisions we make today effect seven generations of children going forward. We gathered, we spoke, we pow-wowed and those holding elected office listened in a measurably significant way. We thank the senators. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ February 23, 2008 Does collective bargaining bill benefit union over kids and child care providers? Senate bill 6522 died on the floor last Tuesday. However, the House companion bill is still alive and is set to have a public hearing on Monday, February 25, 2008 in the Senate Labor and Commerce committee. The current bill adds child care centers to the most recent RCW 41.56 which covers licensed family home and other “exempt in-home” providers. Information found on the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) website touts SEIU having 10,000 child care provider members. Another statistic on the website states that 92% of the providers voted to join SEIU. In doing research for Washington Parents for Safe Child Care and finding these stats; 92% seemed incredibly high. Did SEIU mean 92% out of 10,000 members? A seven day journey commenced to get stats from a number of agencies and organizations. SEIU representatives Gretchen Donart, Communications Organizer and Early Learning Director, Karen Hart; Department of Early Learning manager Larry Horne and Southwest Service Manager, Josh Verville (who covers Clark County); Clark County Child Care Association, President Judith Peters and Treasurer, Melba Halgren and the American Arbitration Association Vice President for elections Jeffrey Zaino were not forthcoming and provided no stats . What might these agencies not want the public, parents and other child care providers to know? The Public Employment Relations Commissions (PERC) when called was immediately forthcoming with the statistics. Out of 10,000 members claimed by SEIU only 2236 (that’s the 92% number) voted for the SEIU. Only 22% of about 10,000 members (PERC had the total at 9842). How many providers voted for the 2007 SEIU contract? SEIU touts 99%. 99% of how many who voted? An additional confusion: will all child care providers (some 5000 licensed providers) be required to pay, however it may be described in the small fine cramped print on the SEIU membership application cards? It describes three types of payees: dues, fair share fee payer and objector fee. No category was found that said a provider does not have to pay. Payment can be more than $50.00 a month. As reported by the Washington Policy Center (WPC): “SEIU Local 925 represents more than 46,000 public sector employees, including service employees at public schools and University of Washington. For most of these workers, membership in Local 925 is a mandatory condition of their employment, and failure to pay union dues in full and on time is cause for dismissal.” The collective bargaining bill “won” by the Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE) had that union threatening 800 state employees with being fired for not signing up to have money deducted from their paychecks. How will SEIU handle the independent small business child care providers who do not want to be in SEIU? The current bill states as fact that the quality of family home care improved as a result of the collective bargaining bill passed in 2006. As reported by the WPC: “To the contrary, only eight FCH providers achieved National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC) accreditation in 2007. This is an increase of only one over the seven providers accredited in 2006, out of a field of 5,387 FCH providers.” The Department of Early Learning has released no reports showing an improvement in quality in licensed family home child care as a result of the SEIU contract. Has Pandora’s box been opened? The bill says it’s an emergency. What’s the rush? January 8, 2008 Update on Public Disclosure The new year brought a return of the Department of Early Learning fulfilling public disclosure requests in a legal and prompt fashion. Out of 774 pages no redactions were made. This is such a change from previous years of massive redactions, massive delays and massive failures to produce records under the Public Disclosure law RCW 42.56. The requests were processed by managers at headquarters including Larry Horne, the new assistant director of the Quality Division and Amy Blondin, Communications manager. This update is to give due recognition and appreciation; and best wishes to the DEL managers that this kind of role modeling filters down to the Region and local office levels. Check out the Coalition for Open Government website, especially their 2008 legislative agenda: _________________________________________________________________________________________________ More about that later. To answer the unnamed person's viewpoint that I was unfair. I was not unfair. The information I asked for was not for the records of providers who had legal enforcement actions taken against them in October and November 2007. I merely asked for the names. Names by the way that are required to be posted on the DEL website per RCW 43.215.525 as revocations and denials are enforcement actions. To this day that has not been done. I stated to Mr. Verville today that I have no problem and would celebrate DEL being successful with their mission; and would be glad to help them in that mission (per RCW 43.215.005(3)(c) ).
In the future, this page will also examine the influence of the Governor’s Office, the State Auditor’s Office, the Office of Financial Management, the Children and Family Ombudsman’s office, the Attorney General’s Office, private corporations, child care industry lobbyists and the state employee and provider unions in the licensing and oversight of child care.
Here's another example: "Child left out of visual and auditory range. Child is sexually abused by older child." Again this small number of providers voted that "Child is sexually abused by older child." be edited out.
One provider's position at the beginning of the meeting (which all family home providers agreed with) was don't associate true examples to a specific provider complaint page on the DEL website. She said just put the facts as related to that complaint and to that provider on the web page. She said keep the hyperlink to the WAC (the regulations governing having a child care license) or WACs that were deemed to have been violated in the specific complaint. Then she left. The other family home providers agreed with her (a vote was taken) and stayed. If that is what they truly believed they should have left with her.
By staying they ended participating in what now looks like their position is to hide information from parents by changing actual and true examples to bland generic examples. Further eroding their position the author as the lone parent voice/witness (20 some providers were in attendance) was signaled out by a provider as though this author was the enemy; and providers were cautioned about what they said as I had a tape recorder. This was a public meeting being recorded by the state with cameras and the meeting was telecast all over the state.
Amy Blondin, again to her credit affirmed that this was a public meeting.
The managers of DEL will provide the defining moments whether this 5th reform of child care licensing will succeed. At the end of a licensor's investigation into a complaint there can be a paragraph that summarizes the "valid" complaint. Then the licensor, supervisor, service manager or clerk can copy that paragraph, paste it and hyperlink it to the complaint page.
Very simple. Providers get what they voted for on March 15th and parents get what they need to make decisions about the health, safety and well-being on their child in licensed care.
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