Lack of discipline

By Andrew Garber
Staff Writer

At right: "I wish I had some clout and could say (to day-care operators), 'I'll give you two weeks,'" says Sharon Rankin, a licensing inspector for the Department of Human Services. The state's inspectors have few options do deal with providers who have bad track records. Staff photo by John Ewing.

Even Janet McDougal agrees: The state Department of Human Services should have shut down her day-care home sooner.

State records show McDougal's teen-age son sexually molested seven day-care children in her home in Fort Fairfield. DHS could have prevented some of the abuse if it had closed her down when it was first alerted to the problem, McDougal says.

Instead, state officials waited nine months before telling McDougal in mid-1995 that her day-care permit would not be renewed. During that time, another child had been victimized, she says.

At the time, McDougal says, she didn't believe her son was abusing children. The state should have acted anyway, she said. ''They should have said, 'We're pulling your license.' I wish they had, if you want to know the truth.''

Her case is not an isolated example. A five-month examination by the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram shows that a permit from DHS is no guarantee that a day-care operation is safe for children.

The investigation shows that DHS, the agency responsible for regulating day-care providers in Maine, has repeatedly failed to discipline providers - even when faced with proof that children have been mistreated while under the providers' care.

The record ''shows a failure on the part of the legal system to protect children,'' admits Paul Bright, a DHS child-care licensing worker and former supervisor of the division that regulates child-care operators.

That failure represents a breach of trust with parents who rely on the state to assure that children are safe when they are cared for by regulated providers.

Parents increasingly must place their children in day care - paying up to $650 a month for full-time care - so they can work. More than 60 percent of American mothers with preschool children are in the labor force.

The number of day-care providers in Maine has almost doubled in the past decade, from 1,660 in 1988 to roughly 3,200 today. About 50,000 children spend up to 50 hours a week in regulated day care in Maine.

Most day-care operations are safe. But nationally, experts say, an estimated 12 percent are so poorly run that they pose a health and safety risk to children.

No comparable estimate is available for Maine. DHS records are so poorly kept that the agency does not track complaints or disciplinary actions taken against day-care operators. The data is buried in thick manila folders stuffed in metal filing cabinets.

However, the Press Herald and Telegram - by analyzing nine years worth of handwritten logbook entries, conducting more than 200 interviews and intensively studying dozens of day-care case files - found that:

• DHS has repeatedly failed to take disciplinary action against day-care providers after state investigators uncovered incidents of abuse, neglect and hazardous conditions.

  Since 1990, The state has received more than 2,000 complaints against day-care operators, yet DHS cannot cite a single case where the department revoked a provider's license.

• When DHS does take disciplinary action, it often is ineffective. The most aggressive step the state commonly takes is not to renew the permits of providers that violate regulations.

  Yet providers who fight to keep their licenses have always stayed in business, licensing officials admit.

• Unlicensed day-care providers operate with no oversight, as the recent death of a 4-month-old child at a babysitter's home in Old Orchard Beach demonstrated. The babysitter, Virginia Stanley, has been charged with manslaughter in the case. She has pleaded innocent.

Even when DHS does find out about day-care providers operating without a license, the agency rarely takes disciplinary action. For example, the agency has the right to fine illegal day-care operators $500, but has never done so.

• DHS does not routinely tell parents about problems found in day-care operations. Parents generally must call the DHS office in Augusta to find out if complaints have been filed against their day-care provider.

• Inspectors say enormous caseloads prevent them from adequately overseeing 3,600 day-care providers that are operating or applying for permits to open.

The inspectors oversee more than 400 day-care providers each. Their caseloads are four times higher than levels recommended by licensing experts.

The state Legislature this year gave the agency permission to use $120,000 in federal money to hire two new inspectors and a full-time supervisor. The new staff will help, but will not cure the problem of large caseloads.

• In addition to heavy caseloads, inspectors say DHS' efforts to regulate day-care providers have been hampered by limited enforcement options and lack of support by the state Attorney General's Office when it comes to prosecuting cases in court.

• Day-care operators themselves say the state is not doing a good job of regulating the industry. They complain that inspectors do not visit frequently enough and do not spend enough time at day-care facilities to see what is really going on.

Concannon promised swift reform, but new steps being taken by the state to enforce regulations more aggressively could actually lead to a deterioration of quality in some home day-care operations.

Maine's failure to regulate day-care providers is indicative of a broader societal neglect involving the care of our youngest children. Improving the overall safety and quality of child care has long been a low priority nationally.

This neglect has resulted in a day-care system, across the nation, that largely fails to meet the needs of children, experts say, and in some cases threatens their health and safety.

''Every day we put hundreds of thousands of children in child care that compromises what they can be,'' said Edward Zigler, a professor at Yale University and a leading national expert on child care.

Poor-quality child care can lead to learning disabilities and even criminal behavior, he said. ''We are doing ourselves in with bad child care. It is a tragedy of our society.''

Continued....