Day Care Compliance Matters

With the dramatic increase in working mothers, day care has become a major industry in the nation. In Connecticut, day care operations are regulated by the Department of Public Health (DPH).

A day care operation may be a “group day care home” a “child day care center”, or a “family day care home”, depending primarily upon the number of children involved. Regardless, these “day care” activities are licensed and regulated by DPH.

The purpose of day care regulation is to protect children. DPH not only licenses day cares, but promulgates extensive regulations, and conducts announced and unannounced inspections. In addition, parents may make complaints to DPH.

Day care operators, then, are sometimes faced with DPH compliance matters.

DPH regulations cover many things, including administration, staffing, recordkeeping, health and safety, physical facilities, medications, and other items. All responsible day care operators wish to comply with DPH regulations. Nevertheless, in some cases, genuine misunderstandings may arise. Sometimes they are easily resolved; sometimes not.

In addition, parents may also make complaints to DCF. Therefore, in some cases, both DCF and DPH are involved in a day care operation. Suffice it to say that DCF and DPH may look at the same complaint in different ways. There is no guarantee that satisfying one will satisfy the other; none at all.

As a result, if you are managing a day care operation, it is not a bad idea to consider having an attorney to deal with DPH matters, as well as DCF problems that may arise.

DPH may schedule a Compliance Meeting to review discrepancies found during inspections. When you have a DPH compliance meeting, there are 4 possible outcomes:

1. No action, or a negotiated corrective action plan.
2. Consent Order. This involves money damages, and is negotiable.
3. Statement of Charges. This means DPH intends to revoke your license. You are entitled to appeal before a Hearing Officer.
4. Voluntary surrendering of your license.

My experience is that DPH is extremely reasonable, and its staff always willing to cooperate in good faith. DPH understands that day cares are necessary to permit the economy to function. However, it is always preferable to have any agreements in writing, and to have an attorney review those agreements to ensure, insofar as possible, that there are no future misunderstandings.

This office will assist day care operators in DPH compliance matters. We will work with DPH to try to resolve problems as quickly and efficiently as possible. If a Compliance Meeting is scheduled, we shall attend to represent you. Also, if DCF gets involved, we will deal with DCF; and will do our best to ensure that both agencies are satisfied.

We recently assisted a major child day care center in resolving what could have been a very thorny problem. An employee had acted in an unacceptable manner towards a child. The day care fired the employee. However, by law, the day care was required to report the incident to DCF within 12 hours. The report was made, but unfortunately was a few hours after the required 12-hour time frame.

DCF investigated, and then turned the matter over to DPH. DPH inspected the facility, and found a few other violations; generally minor, but enough to raise concerns.

In addition, there was a genuine factual dispute on one item. DPH had alleged that there were 17 children and one staffer in a room, whereas the rules in that case required one staffer for every 10 children or fraction thereof. However, there actually were two staffers in the room, but the inspector had failed to see one: that staffer was interacting with a child on the carpet, had apparently “blended in”, and was simply not counted. The problem could have been avoided if the inspector had asked then and there where the other staffer was; but the inspector did not do so.  Laziness? Inattention?  Who knows?

The day care, being a fairly extensive operation, had had other DPH/DCF inquiries in the past; and knew there would be some in the future. That is simply the nature of the business. They had an excellent business lawyer, but he was simply not attuned to the ways of State regulation, which is an entirely different legal subject.

This office worked with DPH and DCF. We attended the Compliance Meeting, which was excellently run by DPH, and worked out all the issues. The corrective action plan was put in writing; and when one item turned out to be ambiguous, we worked to resolve it and get it rewritten. Everyone knew what had to be done, and there were no misunderstandings.

Side Note: In the case of the missing staffer, we convinced DPH that the staffer was in fact there. We used both affidavits and sign-in logs. And, while we have no way of knowing for certain, our belief is that DPH management “suggested” to the inspector that she should have asked about the missing staffer right there, instead of writing up a violation and causing problems that could have been avoided. Little things like that are sometimes missed in large organizations; but we try to avoid problems whenever possible.

Other matters were resolved, through better procedures, management inspections, and staff meetings.

The result: safety for the children, and peace of mind for the day care operators.

In this case, the guilty were dismissed, and innocent errors were corrected. The children were protected, and the day care continued to function.

It is not always so. We have had cases of disgruntled parents making unjustified complaints to both DCF and DPH, and causing enormous headaches for day care operators. We are available to work with day care operators; always with the objective of ensuring that the children are protected.