In-home day cares omit training

COLUMBIA – The vast majority of in-home day cares in the Greenville area aren’t following a 2010 law requiring annual, two-hour training, according to a review of database records maintained by the state’s child welfare agency.

Five of 38 day cares were listed as having completed training required under “Kendra’s Law,” according to the state Department of Social Services database reviewed by GreenvilleOnline.com.

But an official with the state’s child welfare agency said training for home day cares will be offered by her agency beginning next month in the Greenville area, a move she hopes will spur more to come into compliance with the law.

Sen. Mike Fair, a Greenville Republican who worked on passage of Kendra’s law, said legislators may need to add an enforcement provision to the law because as it is, the homes face no penalty for not taking the training.

“We’re going to have to insist on the training taking place,” he said. “We just need them to obey the rules.”

The law was named after a six-month-old girl who suffered a traumatic brain injury at the hands of a home day care worker. Parents of the girl originally proposed a mandatory minimum sentence for those convicted of such a crime after the worker involved received probation.

Lawmakers instead crafted a bill to require annual training in hopes of preventing future such tragedies.

“This bill represents a small but significant step toward greater protection for those the Bible calls ‘the least of these,’” Former Gov. Mark Sanford said when he signed the bill into law in September 2010.

“It’s a bit ironic that state law requires far more training to braid hair than it does to operate some childcare businesses.”

Home day cares came under scrutiny this year because of another tragedy, the death of a 3-month-old girl in February at a Greenville home day care.

In March, Kathryn Martin, the mother of the three-month-old girl who suffocated at a Greenville in-home day care, tearfully asked lawmakers to tighten the laws concerning such facilities, which are registered with DSS but not licensed.

Until a new law was passed this year, in-home centers weren’t required to be inspected by DSS but were limited to six children. Martin’s daughter died in a facility that had 23 children at the time, according to investigators and former DSS Lillian Director Koller.

Investigators said they found a loaded firearm on a bookshelf that was accessible to children and alcoholic beverages under the kitchen sink with no child lock devices on the cabinets to keep children from gaining access.

Leigh Bolick, director of early care and education for DSS, said Kendra’s law didn’t give her agency any ability to take action against a home day care if they don’t take the training.

“It simply says we have to put on the website either yes they did comply or no they didn’t,” she said.

Mike Spears, a Spartanburg lawyer representing the Martin family, said he believes it is an “absurd situation” for a law to say that day care operators shall complete training without any enforcement of compliance.

He said he believes the word “shall” in the law makes it a requirement for registered home day care centers to follow.

“If that’s the position they (DSS) takes, then the Legislature needs to make it clear that if they don’t meet the requirements of a day care, they can’t be a registered day care center,” he said.

“If we don’t do something about it now, it will be the next tragedy before it comes back up again.”

Beginning in October, Bolick said, homes day cares in the Greenville area will be visited by DSS. Until the new law was passed, she said the only way DSS could visit was as a result of a complaint.

She said the agency will offer training on what DSS will be doing under a new law allowing one announced visit per year for registered facilities.

“We’ve gotten lots of calls asking questions from all over the state,” she said. “I think they are very interested in the training.”

She said the agency wants the home day cares to be successful in the DSS visits and hopes the new training will allow most home day cares to comply with Kendra’s Law.

“We want to work a partnership with them so kids are healthy and safe,” she said.

One program designed for that purpose, called the ABC Quality program, uses a letter grade to represent the level the day care achieves in the program. DSS monitors and visits the facilities to see they are following standards in the program.

About eight of the Greenville-area facilities, according to the DSS database, are participating in the program, which is voluntary.

Several home day care providers said they don’t participate because they don’t have any children who are using ABC vouchers.

Bolick estimated that about a third of home care providers participate in the program. She said those that do are subject to unannounced visits by DSS.

“Generally speaking, people do what they are required to do,” she said. “Some go above and beyond, but generally people do what they are required to do.”

Bolick said she hopes that as a result of the DSS visits to home day cares, “They will want to be more involved with us.”

Spears has told a Senate DSS oversight panel that home day cares should be licensed and several lawmakers agree.

Some Greenville home day care operators also agree, saying they wouldn’t have any objection to being licensed instead of registered.