I have written in the past about challenges parents face in finding the right place for their child’s day care. Tips for Finding the Best Daycare for Your Child, Seven Tips for Getting the Best Daycare for Your Child (a guest post I wrote that was published on another law firm’s website), Daycare Safety Resources, Signs of a Bad Daycare Center, Go Elsewhere If Your Child’s Daycare Center Has No Handbook.

Here is another resource you might find helpful.

The Parents Guide to Choosing Safe and Healthy Child Care is a publication of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. One thing I like about the Guide is that you can download the pdf file and take it with you when you are talking to the director of every daycare facility you are considering. Ask all the questions and get the right answers.

The guidelines are based on research, so I won’t quibble with what’s on the list, but I would include some questions that are not on the list. Maybe it’s the “lawyer” in me, but here are things I would add to the list:

• I would want to SEE proof of the answers to the questions to, for instance, the qualifications of the director and every teacher. I wouldn’t want to just have someone say, “Oh, yes, we’re all qualified.”
• I would want to SEE proof that the center maintains its teacher/child ratio every day at all times. So, does the center have and use a system that tracks when teachers are present or absent and what accommodations are made to keep the ratio proper?
• I would want to SEE the center’s parent handbook. Does it set out systems for emergencies? Does it reveal the center’s policies and procedures about children coming in sick and a (flexible!) schedule that is appropriate to your child’s age?

What other questions would you have?  What other proof would you want to see? Let me know and I’ll add it to my list.

The bottom line is to use every resource you can find that will give you the most information possible that will help you make the best decision you can. Your child’s well being depends on it.

One of its most valuable pages is an A-Z  list of links to websites that provide health and safety tips and information related to child care. Here are just a few examples of the kind of information you can find there:

• Allergies
• Background checks
• Biting
• Child care health consultants
• Children with special needs
• Choosing child care
• Emergency preparedness/disaster planning
• Licensing
• Military child care
• Parenting
• Playground safety
• Quality
• SIDS

Each topic has links to one or more sites, some of which are national in scope while others are state specific.The list has  many more items than I have included here.

The site is loaded with information useful to anyone interested in issues involving child care.

According to Ken, the law creates a “systemic problem” and “invites abuse.” Because the daycare provider wanted to have more children than licensing allowed, “there is an incentive not to be licensed, [so the State will not] know you exist.”

Licensing of daycare facilities doesn’t guarantee your child will be safe, but at least with licensing you know that the State knows about the provider and there is an expectation that the daycare provider’s home is being inspected and the provider knows the rules and follows them. However, when the daycare is operating illegally, it is under the radar, and the State may not even know it exists.

This tragedy could easily have happened to Virginia parents.  Licensing and regulation of home daycare providers doesn’t even come into play in Virginia until the home daycare center has six children. The home where Landon Schultz died in February in Wisconsin had four children for one adult. That ratio is acceptable in Virginia.

P.S. Parents of young children want to stay on top of safety issues, especially the unsafe products that have been recalled. Ken writes a very helpful blog, The Safest Line, that is devoted to keeping children safe. I suggest you subscribe to his blog to keep up to date on safety recalls and other great information for parents.

Summer 2011 has not even yet arrived, but a child has already died from hyperthermia. (Hyperthermia is the term for what happens when a body overheats and cannot regulate its temperature after being exposed to extreme heat.)

In August 2009, I posted a story about a child who died in a daycare van in Richmond, Virginia, when the driver forgot he was in the back and left him in the van all day. According to Safe Kids USA, 40 children died of hyperthermia in 2010, the largest number since records have been kept.

These may seem silly, but they are not. Here are some tips from Safe Kids USA for preventing hyperthermia:

1. Dial 911 immediately if you see an unattended child in a car. EMS professionals are trained to determine if a child is in trouble.
2. Never leave a child unattended in a vehicle, even with the window slightly open.
3. Place a cell phone, smartphone, purse, briefcase, gym bag or whatever is to be carried from the car, on the floor in front of a child in a backseat. This triggers adults to see children when they open the rear door and reach for their belongings.
4. Set your cell phone or Blackberry reminder to be sure you dropped your child off at day care.
5. Set your computer calendar program, such as Outlook, to ask, “Did you drop off at daycare today?”
6. Have a plan that if your child is late for daycare that you will be called within a few minutes. Be especially careful if you change your routine for dropping off little kids at day care.
7. Teach children not to play in any vehicle.
8. Lock all vehicle doors and trunk after everyone has exited the vehicle – especially at home. Keep keys out of children’s reach. Cars are not playgrounds or babysitters.
9. Check vehicles and trunks FIRST if a child goes missing.

You think you don’t need these tips and such a thing would NEVER happen to you? Sadly, a child was found dead in a car in March in Texas when her mother forgot she was in the back seat and left her in the car all day.

If you need a daycare provider to pick your child up and take her to the facility, you must make sure that it has a system THAT IT ACTUALLY USES for assuring that all children who were picked up have been taken out of the van and brought into the center.

Last year, 49 children died in the United States from hyperthermia (overheating) after being left in cars and vans, some of them by daycare centers (including at least one in Virginia). Every daycare center should have an ironclad system to make absolutely sure that every child who was put into the van is taken out of the van as soon as they arrive at their destination.

LOOKING AT A DAYCARE CENTER FOR YOUR CHILD? HOW MANY OF THESE SYSTEMS DOES THE CENTER USE?

• It does a headcount when the van arrives at the center and sees that all children are accounted for
• It does other headcounts during the day to make sure all children who are expected to be there are there
• If a child who is expected is not there, it calls the parents to find out why

ASK TO SEE THESE DOCUMENTS:

• The forms that must be filled out by the driver(s) of the van – who they pick up and who they take off the van
• The written procedures for making sure the children who are expected to arrive do actually arrive in their rooms
• Whatever process is used to make sure the forms are filled out and the procedures followed

When you ask for this information, the proper response should not be, “I’ll have to get back to you on that.” There should be a large stack of forms that the center has been using for some time to make sure the children in its charge have been transported safely. (Of course, personal information should be blacked out before you see the forms, but they should be there for you to see.)

There absolutely must be an ironclad policy with the childcare provider that, if your child unexpectedly doesn’t show up to daycare, someone from the staff will contact you immediately. There are not many times I use the words “ironclad” and “absolutely”, but this is one of them.

Sure, it’s hard running a daycare center. I don’t care how many employees don’t show up for work or how many other emergencies have happened, this is an absolute. The unexpected happens. But, there is no excuse for a daycare provider’s letting a child sit, trapped, in a van all day and die. None. Zero.

Your child should never be left on the daycare van. If you or someone you know needs to speak to a Virginia child injury lawyer about daycare neglect, call Sandra Rohrstaff at 703-260-6070, or send an email to Sandra@RohrstaffLaw.com, or contact her through the website, www.RohrstaffLaw.com. She can help.

A few years ago, I represented the family of a two-year-old boy who died from the infection he got after suffering scalding burns over much of his body when boiling water on the stove fell on him. (The injury was especially devastating to the boy’s parents. He had come running into the kitchen and startled his dad who was standing by the stove. The dad turned abruptly and knocked the pot off the stove. The boiling hot water splashed onto the boy.)

A young child’s skin is thinner than an older child or adult’s. So, a young child can be burned at a lower temperature and the burn can go deeper into the skin and inner tissues. The majority of people who suffer burns from scalding liquid are younger than four years of age.

Check your own kitchen and the routines of your family. Do your young children usually come into the kitchen and stand close to the stove when you are cooking? Kitchens and bathrooms are two of the most dangerous rooms in your house for young children. Here is a link to tips for keeping your child safe around the house.

If your child is in home daycare, be sure the daycare provider does not allow the children to be in the kitchen if there is cooking going on.

Young children do not understand the dangers and cannot control their actions. That is why the law does not fault young children for their injuries. In Virginia, if your young child suffers a burn injury, it is never her fault.

If you have questions about whether your should consider holding someone else responsible for your child’s burn injury, contact an experienced child injury lawyer.

Before they came to me, the child’s mother gave a recorded statement to the insurance company for the daycare center. She’s a nice lady. She thought she was helping to get the matter resolved. It never occurred to her that once they got all the information from her, they would clam up and become uncooperative.

Did she get an apology for the injury? Nope. Did they offer to pay the child’s bills? No, again. And, then, after being told by the center’s insurance adjuster that her lawyer could take the employee’s statement, how do you think they responded when we called to set it up? The request was met with a very rude “No! Why should we allow that? Get a subpoena.” (Obviously, the insurance adjuster got overruled by the daycare center’s top ‘human resources’ person.)

It’s people like that guy who keep me in this business. Why would he not cooperate? After all, by not allowing us the opportunity to hear his employee’s side of the story in an informal setting, he gave up the chance to prevent the aggravation and cost of a claim being made or a lawsuit being filed. Now, we will have to file a lawsuit to be able to hear from the employee. Although I cannot imagine what his explanation will be for throwing a kickball at a child and hitting her in the head (when they were not playing a game), I’m sure he will have something to say.

The HR director could not have known that on the rare occasions whenI have been allowed to interview a potential wrongdoer before filing a lawsuit, I have decided against including them in a lawsuit. Maybe the reason everyone else would not allow me to interview their insured is because they knew they were wrong. I understand that. The HR director was so rude, I believe there must be something very interesting that I will find out from the man who threw the ball and probably from others at the daycare center, too.

I look forward to hearing what they all have to say — after I file a lawsuit.

You probably signed many forms when you registered your child in a daycare center. Was one of them a form stating that you gave up your right to sue the facility on behalf of your child even if  an employee of the facility negligently does something (or does NOT do something) that results in injury to your child? Such forms often use the words “waiver of liability.”  In most states, if you sign such a form you cannot sue the daycare center if your child is injured, regardless of how serious the injury.

In Virginia, such forms are invalid. They are not enforceable. Why? Because Virginia long ago held such pre-injury release form were against its public policy.

Virginia does not believe that people should give up their right to seek compensation BEFORE they suffer personal injuries caused by someone else’s negligence. So, even if you had to sign such a form, if your child is injured at a daycare facility in Virginia, and it was the fault of one of its employees, you should not assume that you are prohibited from making a claim against the facility.

If you signed such a form and have questions, you should contact an experienced Virginia child injury lawyer who can give  you answer your questions.

The facility was not licensed by Virginia because it is considered a religious-exempt facility. The Licensing Division of the Virginia Department of Social Services  may only send inspectors to religious-exempt facilities to confirm they are in compliance with Code requirements and to investigate complaints.

Once DSS investigated the daycare center and found its adult-child ratio grossly lacking, charges were filed against Tammy Futtrell and two others who were running the facility. A grand jury recently returned an indictment against Futtrell for homicide and child cruelty/neglect/abuse and against two others for felony child cruelty/neglect/abuse.

It is hard to find words to even respond to such a devastating event. Dylan’s mother Betsy Cummings trusted this daycare center because it was operated and run by a church. The State of Virginia grants such institutions exemptions from licensure because of their religious nature. Yet Dylan died while in the care of Little Eagles Day Care at Bethel Temple Church of Deliverance in Norfolk.

It should not have happened. No one should ever have to leave their child at a daycare center and fear he will be neglected or abused.

Imagine the surprise Mr. and Mrs. Locasio would have had if they had checked on their son one day in April at the Angels of Tomorrow Child Development Center in Simpson, North Carolina. They might have seen one of the center employees scrubbing their son’s face with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. See the video clip here.

The center’s story is that the employee had to hold the child down to scrub his face so he would be presentable when the parents picked him up. He was not. His face had several abrasions from the scrubbing. His parents would have preferred that the employee left the marker on his face and arm instead of causing the abrasions from scrubbing his face with the Magic Eraser.

The parents were called on the day of the incident and informed that their son had marked his body; however, they were not told that one of its employees had tried to scrub the marks off with an abrasive sponge. The employee has been fired, too late for the Locasio’s son, and faces charges of child abuse.

Angels of Tomorrow is committed to the safety of children in its care. It’s handbook states that it supports the philosophy of “utmost protection” of children in “all” suspected cases of child abuse or neglect and that it adopts procedures for reporting such incidents. The parents only recently saw the video, because  Angels of Tomorrow would not allow them to see the video until after they hired a child injury lawyer. Evidently, their procedures do not include full disclosure to the child’s parents when an employee injures their child.

If your child shows any signs of injury after coming home from her daycare center, do whatever you have to do to get access to all  incident reports, videos and whatever else the facility may have that is evidence of what happened. Contact a child injury lawyer who can investigate where abuse has occurred at a daycare facility.

Sandra Rohrstaff is experienced in representing children who have been injured. She can be reached at 703-260-6070, by email at Sandra@RohrstaffLaw.com, or through the firm’s website, www.RohrstaffLaw.com.