When a facility loses 50% of their staff over a year, keeping up with crim checks or back ground checks and drug testing and staff training and adult education is beyond what any director can be expected to do.
As an employer of young teachers, everyone realizes that early childhood can’t pay what other jobs pay, so a good place will buy health insurance, start retirement accounts and give time off with pay. It makes sense to keep good people wanting a great job.
But spending more money to do what job improvement could do is like feeding the lion by putting your bottom through the bars. Good grief, get a clue, better get a brain.
Legislators See Holes in Checks of Day Care Staff
BY ADAM WILSON
THE OLYMPIAN
Washington State: Parents and the public might be unaware of the
issue, but legislators said Thursday they are troubled by the weakness in the
state's background checks on child-care workers.
"I'm fairly dismayed now," said Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle.
She said she believed all child-care workers were covered by some kind
of criminal history check, but she and other members of a legislative task force
learned the system relies on the honesty of the people it checks.
Licensed child-care center workers and in-home providers must pass a
background check, but people who say they have lived in the state for over three
years are not required to submit fingerprints.
They give the state their name and date of birth, and if either one is
forged, the system will not turn up convictions.
"If people are giving you bad information, you aren't going to get a
good-quality I.D.," said Sen. Dale Brandland, R-Bellingham.
Parents rarely ask about background checks on workers, said Steve
Olson, executive director of Olympia Child Care Center. It's been more of a
concern to those who run child-care centers, he said.
"We do do background checks with every staff person who walks through
the door," Olson said. "Occasionally something will pop up and it comes in our
hands, and obviously we don't hire. We're very cautious about it."
Olson said there have been no abuse problems with staff in the more
than 30 years the child-care center has been open, but the concerns might be
greater in small in-home operations, where staff are more likely to be left
alone with a single child.
Anne Holm of the state Auditors Office pointed to a 2003 investigation
of child-care in Mattawa, where auditors said $839,919 in questionable subsidies
were due to "misstatements of identity."
The state auditor has called for
two years to confirm a person's photo identification in person -- instead of
accepting a photocopy -- and require proof of three-year state residency or
require fingerprint-based checks by the FBI.
But doing so not only requires a change in state law, it would be an
insurmountable task, said Joel Roalkbam of the Department of Social and Health
Services.
Roalkbam said it is unclear how people would prove they have been in
the state for three years, and there are 80 state licensors to handle 300
requests for background checks from child-care providers each day.
"They wouldn't be doing any licensing anymore, they would just be going
out and comparing photos," he said.
The lawmakers on the task force said they need to change the law, and
the department needs to tighten the process.
"I think you need to solve this issue of three-year residency," Rep.
Mary Lou Dickerson, D-Seattle, told Roalkbam. "I think it's reasonable to
require this kind of proof."
Brandland acknowledged the task is large, but said it is not
insurmountable.
"There are ways to solve this problem, and it will cost money. OK.
Bring us the bill," he said.
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