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Home › Articles › Child Care Issues › How Safe Is Your Childcare?

How Safe Is Your Childcare?

Ensuring Your Child Is in Good Hands

By Teri Brown

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Nothing can cause a parent more worry and stress than finding good, quality daycare for their child. Quality curriculum, a good child-to-caregiver ratio and a state certification may be high on your list of requirements, but No. 1 on the mind of most parents is safety.

For Crystal Porter, mother of two from Springfield, Ill., safety was a prime concern. "I wanted to make sure the person was certified in areas such as CPR, that they were licensed by the state, as well as no history of complaints against him/her," she says.

Scary Statistics
According to a 1998 study done by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), two-thirds of the 220 childcare settings exhibited at least one of the eight safety hazards targeted in the study. The eight hazards inspected included cribs, soft bedding, playground surfacing, playground surfacing maintenance, child safety gates, window blind cords, drawstrings in children's clothing and recalled children's products.

The statistics get more alarming: About 31,000 children, 4 years old and younger, were treated in hospital emergency rooms for injuries at childcare/school settings in 1997. CPSC is aware of at least 56 children who have died in childcare settings since 1990.

What to Look For
So how is a parent to find a childcare situation that will, above all, be safe? First, you need to know what you are looking for.

Marian McDonald has been in the childcare business for more than eight years and last year founded an organization called Professional Association of Certified Childcare Educators (PACCE). PACCE was formed to meet the needs of experienced, established in-home childcare providers who operate professional businesses. It is primarily a networking organization whose members have chosen to network with their colleagues in an effort to provide early childhood education to others about certified family childcare, provide peer support and to share information, opportunities and expertise.


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