Regulations Would Help Save A Child

Idaho legislators don’t like regulations. So, at times, they have to be shocked into doing the right thing.

In the early 1980s, the state ordered criminal background checks of day-care providers only after a convicted child molester was accused of abusing kids.

Javier Tellez-Juarez had to lose both arms and a leg in a December 1995 farm accident before the Legislature finally budged. Today, Idaho requires farmers to provide workers’ compensation insurance to their laborers.

Now, we wonder who will be the unfortunate poster child for Idaho’s child-care reform? What child will have to be molested, injured or worse before legislators properly regulate the growing industry?

Fortunately, three North Idaho senators aren’t waiting for the inevitable to happen. On Friday, state Sens. Gordon Crow, R-Hayden, Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint, and Jack Riggs, R-Coeur d’Alene, announced plans to conduct hearings to see how day-care services can be improved in the region.

Crow, who helped push through a bill that lowered the maximum ratio of infants to day-care worker from 12 to six, held out little hope that something could be done on a statewide basis. Too many of his southern Idaho colleagues are like the monkeys who saw, spoke and heard no evil.

How bad is Idaho’s problem?

For the second year in a row, Working Mother magazine has ranked Idaho among the three worst states in four categories of child care - quality, safety, availability and state commitment. Regulations are few. Inspections are infrequent. And it’s difficult if not impossible to run background checks on day-care owners and workers.

Cheryl Stafford, founder of Lake City’s Family Child Care Association, is appalled and embarrassed by the ranking. At a minimum, she said, everyone involved in day care should be fingerprinted, licensed and have CPR training. “As it is,” she said. “there’s no monitoring. Nobody comes by to check up.”

No one wants to see over-regulation and more bureaucracy. But something’s wrong when almost anyone at least 18 years old can open a day-care center. Something’s amiss when state inspections are infrequent and it’s next to impossible for parents to run background checks on providers and workers.

Even day-care operators are clamoring for more rules. The good ones fear Idaho’s regulatory system promotes inferior day cares that harm children and give the whole industry a black eye.

Regulation, of course, can’t cure every problem with day-care centers. Even with rules, parents should visit a prospective day care, make sure it is accredited by a state or national child-care organization and ask for references.

But regulation can weed out bad day-care centers - and possibly save a child. , DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = D.F. Oliveria/For the editorial board