Breach of Trust - a Portland Press Herald special report

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Safety tips | How done | Compare | System

CASE STUDY:
Little is done about too many children

Expense, scarcity complicate care search | One nightmare led to another
A day at the YMCA | Case study: Lack of supervision tops list of complaints
Case study: Compromise lets oft-cited operation stay open

By Andrew Garber
Staff Writer

Having too many children in a day-care operation without appropriate adult supervision is considered a critical safety issue by child-care experts.

The Department of Human Services has a page of regulations devoted to the subject.

Yet the agency does little to enforce the rules.

Carol Ann Rines is a case in point. On five different occasions between 1989 and 1996, the state says it found Rines caring for more children than she was allowed to in her Wiscasset home.

For example:

On Nov. 27, 1990, a state inspector found 15 children at her day-care home, with two workers. Day-care homes, by law, can only care for 12 children with two staff workers.

Rines, in a recent interview, said that another day-care provider dropped by with seven children to visit, and they were not part of her day-care responsibility. Rines also said there were actually four adults in the home at the time and DHS did not record that fact.

Jim Chaplin, the state supervisor of day-care licensing, said it doesn't matter how many adults were in the home. The law allows a maximum of 12 children.

On May 22, 1996, a state inspector found that Rines was caring for 13 children by herself. State law allows one adult to care for a maximum of eight children of the age Rines had in her home.

Rines said the incident was out of her control because her staff person arrived late to work.

On Aug. 27, 1996, a state inspector found one staff person at the day-care home caring for 10 children.

Rines said she only had nine children in the home, one over the state limit.

In addition to the overenrollment, inspectors repeatedly documented cluttered conditions in the home. Rines disputes their findings and said she kept the place clean.

State records show that day-care licensing inspectors repeatedly warned Rines about taking in too many children and having cluttered conditions in her home.

And every year she was issued a new license - until 1996.

In September 1996, DHS sent Rines a letter saying the state would not renew her license because of repeated problems found by inspectors.

Rines challenged the decision and asked for a hearing.

DHS backed down and reached a compromise agreement with Rines in February 1997. She was issued a conditional license that allowed her to operate if she agreed to maintain proper staff-to-child ratios and complied with all other state regulations.

Chaplin said Rines passed a DHS inspection in January 1998 and met all the conditions in the agreement.

Rines acknowledges the state found too many children in her day-care home at times, but said ''it was a fluke.''

Rines said she challenged the state's decision to deny her license because ''nobody was in danger. There wasn't sex abuse or anything like that. It's just that I was understaffed, which happens to everybody,'' she said.

''Any provider who is doing her job has some point in time when they are overenrolled.''