Child care safety scarier than Halloween

Kara Johnson

This Halloween parents will be thinking about how to keep their kids safe on this spooky holiday. Parents will put a lot of effort into thinking about where their children will go trick or treating, how much candy they consume, and if their costumes are fire resistant.

What they most likely won’t be thinking about come Monday morning is the level of safety associated with their child care center. Most parents do not know that Texas has some of the lowest minimum child care safety standards in the country. Talk about truly scary!

Of upmost concern is the woefully low training requirements our state has for child care workers.

Though many child care centers go well beyond the minimum standards for child care worker training, a great number of our programs meet just the basic requirements for care mandated by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

Texas requires only eight hours of pre-service training for child care workers before they are able to work with young children.

There are two dangers to this situation. Of foremost concern is the safety issue present in this policy. Eight hours is simply not enough time to competently learn CPR, how to prevent deaths related to choking, how to identify child abuse, proper nutrition, basic sanitation, and emergency procedures. Would you feel comfortable if you were asked to manage a room full of young children everyday having just eight hours to learn everything you needed to know? I certainly would not.

Beyond basic safety, I worry about the outcomes associated with improper child care training with respect to early brain development. Critical research tells us that the most essential brain development occurs before children reach the age of five.

A lack of proper stimulation in these years, can lead to significant delays in brain development, resulting in life long consequences.

Children who experience low quality care in the early years are more likely to be referred to special education classes, more likely to have behavioral problems throughout school, less likely to graduate high school later, and more likely to spend time in prison.

Most child care workers are dedicated individuals that want to provide the highest quality care possible. They care deeply for the children they work with and want to see them succeed in life and in school. We do these workers, and the children they serve, a great disservice by failing to set high standards for their training.

Currently, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services is reviewing the Texas Child Care Minimum Standards, which presents an excellent opportunity to improve the quality of our child care system.

The Texas Early Childhood Education Coalition will be recommending higher standards in regards to minimum child care worker training. We are recommending the state double the required hours from eight to 16 in 2010. However, over the next five years, TECEC will be working with its members and partners and policymakers to increase the requirements to the nationally recommended 40 hours.

In the meantime, we will be working to improve the quality of the current training that is provided and ensure those individuals providing the training are qualified to do so. We need your support to implement these recommendations.

Parents, child care workers, directors and advocates, we need your voice to help call for these changes.

Contact your local legislators and ask them to get involved in the Child Care Minimum Standards Review process, or visit www.tecec.org, and sign-up for our listserv, so that we can call on you to take action on this issue as it continues to develop. Dropping a child off at child care should never be scary. Please help us ensure high-quality in our Texas child care system, so that no family has to worry about the safety of their children while in Texas licensed child care.

Kara Johnson is the Executive Director of the Texas Early Childhood Education Coalition.