Child Care Licensing and Government Articles Revising the Regulations for Family Home Providers October 27, 2007
Background Clearance Checks on People who will have Unsupervised Access to your Child 2005 Whistleblower investigations not completed 2007 Legislative session Your Head Bone's Connected to Your Neck Bone Article by David Moody 2006 Seattle Times With a Grade of "F" Washington State Ranked 4th in the Nation
What do the words "Worms! Roxanne! Worms!" from Steve Martin’s film “Roxanne” have to do with Governor Christine Gregoire and the director of the Department of Early Learning, Jone Bosworth?
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ARTICLES REGARDING LICENSED CHILD CARE ISSUE AND THE ACTIONS OF OUR GOVERNMENT WILL BE POSTED ON THIS PAGE.
I had the privilege of sitting in for Stu Jacobson of Washington Parents for Safe Child Care at this meeting. There are well over twenty members attached to this committee, mostly comprised of the Department of Early Learning managers, licensors, licensed family home child care providers, former providers, the provider union, the provider day care association and APRE; then a few members from Child Care Resource and Referral. Representing the parents for the last year has been Stu Jacobson. With the new law which became effective July 22, 2007 the intention of parent advocates is for parents to be well represented from this day forward. The next meeting is December 8, 2007 in Seattle.
The central idea for recommending a regulation is that it must be backed by research and there must be references made to other states regulations that address a particular subject.
The meeting was facilitated well and important information got put on the table.
Latino members, providers, educators and observers at this meeting brought a high class quality of educated insight and discussion to the meeting.
The facilitator crafted a respectful meeting, and indeed, recognized the issue of parents being under represented.
In the early 1990's your government brought to DSHS, Children's Administration a computer system. We call it CAMIS (Children's Administration Management Information System).
That system has been dumping in massive amounts of information on the citizens of Washington. There may be information on you and your family; and they may not have told you.
Contained within this plethora of stored "information" are allegations of child abuse and/or neglect that either were never investigated or poorly investigated.
Senator Val Stevens,39th Legislative District (the Whatcom, Skagit, Snohomish area) at a Human Services and Corrections Senate Committee hearing reported that DSHS is currently "purging" information from CAMIS.
This includes information on former providers who lost their licenses.
Which means potentially those providers could come back, make application to get a license and the history regarding them and what happened in their day care facilities is gone.
I sent an email on February 2, 2007 and stopped by the office of the Chair of one of the Senate Human Services and Corrections committee, Senator Hargrove (24th Legislative District, up there on the Olympic penisula) and asked who is doing the purging and for it to stop.
There are concerning pieces of information in CAMIS if true would raise a potential risk to children.
The managers of the agency are not addressing that information. Supervisors and managers have approved people to work with children unsupervised without addressing the concerning information found in CAMIS.
I will follow up about the purging to see if I can get an answer and report back.
The agency and the legislature are not moving forward to making it a law to process fingerprinting on all applicants who want to work with children in the state of Washington.
About five years ago the submission forms an applicant would fill out required them to write down their residences for the last seven years.
Now they only have to check a box stating that they have lived in Washington state for the past three years.
March 13, 2007 update: Another email was sent to Senator Hargrove. No response to date.
March 18, 2007 no response yet from Senator Hargrove
In February 2005 the State Auditor, Brian Sonntag received whistleblower reports regarding allegations that managers in the child care licensing agencies had changed records, destroyed records out of current licensing files as well as issuing licenses to providers or approving staff to have unsupervised access to children without investigating properly, thoroughly and in some cases with no investigation. Managers allowed providers to continue operating after, for example, finding 21 children in a provider's care. Eight of those children hidden upstairs (two were babies)in unlicensed parts of the house which had no fire exits off the second story).
The State Auditor was not going to investigate further, then Rep. Ross Hunter (one of Washington's good guys) intervened to look into the matter. With that the State Auditor sent the reports over the Mary Meinig of the Children and Family Ombudsman Office to investigate. That was September 2005. Eighteen month old Jaclyn Frank died December 1, 2005. To date that investigation has not been completed.
Check back for follow up information.
Bills that were introduced to House and to Senate Committees this legislative session:
As a long time employee, witness and observer of our Washington State government managers in our bureaucracy that is DSHS (Department of Social and Health Services) a behind the scenes look at what has been transpiring behind closed doors reveals itself this legislative year.
A lengthy bill (Senate Bill 5950) was introduced to legally give a definition to the term "social worker". Another bill (House bill 2142) addresses the workplace bullying and harassment towards employees in state government.
That the legislature is put in a position to attempt to micromanage the government bureaucracy brings up the question of who are the people (what are their names, their titles their experience, their backgrounds, their education and their history) who have managed and are managing DSHS and DEL?
Senate Bill 5997 was introduced proposing to give state employees more immunity from liability.
On February 21, 2007 I wrote the following to Senator James Hargrove and Senator Val Stevens who were hearing public testimony on the bills regarding definition of Social Worker and giving more immunity to state workers:
"The legislature is currently being put in the position to more and more "attempt" to micromanage because the managers you have either don't have the skills or the integrity to do so.
It would benefit the citizens of Washington state and pay respect to the children that have died and to the parents who have lost children to create a definition of "State Manager" and what degree would it be that they hold?
Currently citizens have no right to know what degrees managers in DSHS and DEL hold. Would you so kindly sponser a bill to reveal that data to the citizens of Washington State?"
At this time no response neither Senator have responded to my written testimony and request to draft legislation to define "state manager".
I will follow up and report back.
FOLLOW UP: March 18, 2007. Neither Senator Stevens or Hargrove have responded to date.
I'll take you back down the family tree of child care licensing beginning in 1993.
The most important aspect of this family tree to know is although the name of the agency changed the bureaucratic managers of importance have stayed relatively the same.
1993 child care licensing was in the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), Children's Administrations (CA),Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS. The top person of course was the) Governor.
1994 child care licensing went under an agency in DSHS/CA called the Office of Child Care Policy (OCCP).
1996 the Division of Licensed Resources (DLR) was created and OCCP went under that. They also created a Child Protective Services agency under DLR to innvestigate licensed facilities and providers alleged to have committed abuse as defined under RCW 26.44.
2001 child care licensing was pulled out of Children's Administration and put under Economic Services Administration (ESA) and named changed to the Divsion of Child Care and Early Learning (DCCEL).
July 2006 child care licensing was pulled out of DSHS and put under the Governor's Office creating the Department of Early Learning. The child care licensing agency is now referred to as Child Care and Early Learning (CCEL).
I found this article on the internet and found it interesting as another bill was floated out the 2007 legislative session to limit liability by the state. I wondered who was putting forth the bill and couldn't get an answer. So I'm guessing our Attorney General Rob McKenna as he did so in 2006. I will correct if wrong.
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Guest columnist: Stand up for state's fragile citizens
By David P. Moody, Special to The Times
January 31, 2006
Attorney General Rob McKenna recently convinced Sens. Adam Kline and Stephen Johnson to introduce Senate Bill 6215, a measure specifically tailored to shield state government, most importantly the Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), from lawsuits arising out of its own incompetence. By doing so, SB 6215 would harm the most powerless, voiceless and disabled people in our state.
Specifically, SB 6215 seeks to shield DSHS from negligent acts of its own making, including: DSHS' failure to take actions; DSHS' failure to properly perform investigations of misconduct; DSHS' failure to properly license and permit individuals to care for vulnerable clients; and DSHS' failure to properly assess the level of funding and type of services for which beneficiaries of government financial assistance programs are eligible.
By a wide margin, Washington voters recently rejected an attempt by insurance companies to limit the monetary recovery of injured patients in medical-malpractice lawsuits. The people of this state recognized their vulnerability as consumers of medical care, and voted to maintain their right to competent health care. But, this time around, who will stand up to require competent care for our state's most-fragile citizens?
Examine what SB 6215 would do. Had this law been on the books:
• DSHS would have been immunized from any liability in connection with its decision to subsidize the torture of Linda David, the woman trapped on a sailboat for 12 years while DSHS continued to pay her abuser/caregiver/husband.
• DSHS would have been allowed to escape accountability for the prolonged rapes, handcuffings, burnings and exploitation of Damon Beckman, Bill Coalter and Eric Busch — three developmentally disabled men who, despite a litany of warnings, were ignored by DSHS social workers who, instead, chose to leave these vulnerable young men confined in the state-licensed facility where they were being abused.
• DSHS would have been allowed to abdicate its responsibility for the brain damage suffered by little Hailee Rhoads, an infant who was thrown on her head in a fit of frustration by a state-licensed day-care operator whom DSHS had ample reason to believe was unfit to care for children.
It is not difficult to see the logic behind SB 6215. DSHS has been the subject of many justified lawsuits resulting in large judgments, public disbelief, blistering assessments and high-profile news stories. DSHS cannot, or is unwilling to, accept accountability. Instead of meaningfully striving to make itself a more responsive agency, it seeks to mask its inefficiencies with a cloak of immunity.
McKenna knows that the people who will be negatively impacted by SB 6215 (the disabled, the vulnerable, children reliant upon state assistance) do not have the resources, the education or the voice to stand in its way. Perhaps he believes that those among us with the ability to thwart its passage will not have a sufficient reason to care.
Not so fast, Mr. McKenna. We do care. There are 8 billion reasons for us to care. This figure represents the number of taxpayer dollars allocated to DSHS every year. The citizens contribute more money to DSHS than any other state agency. In fact, it is not even close. Using taxpayer dollars, DSHS serves one in four state residents and two of five state children. DSHS is in the "people business" and we are the people.
This is not a partisan issue, nor can it be properly classified as "tort reform." Republicans and Democrats alike pay DSHS to perform its job efficiently. And, effective reform necessitates action on behalf of the reformer.
If the Legislature enacts SB 6215, it will give DSHS a free pass. DSHS will be allowed to scoop up $8 billion from the taxpayers each year, touch the lives of the most vulnerable, and, should DSHS cause its clients any harm, it will be allowed to claim, "We tried our best. If that wasn't good enough, too bad."
For $8 billion each year, the taxpayers deserve an agency that is accountable — one that takes responsibility and learns from its errors instead of sweeping its problems under a tarp of political convenience.
David P. Moody of Seattle is a trial attorney and vice president of the Arc of Washington State, an advocacy group for individuals with developmental disabilities and their families. He was the attorney for Linda David and the other individuals mentioned in this column. He can be reached at http://www.davidmoodylaw.com
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2002772361_moody31.html
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