While state regulators have shut down six child-care centers in Tucson in the last three years, other centers remain open despite repeated violations, a newspaper reported.
State regulators have cracked down on 55 child-care centers in Tucson over the last three years, citing a host of child injuries and other violations, the Arizona Daily Star reported Nov. 19.
One of the incidents that occurred at one of the 55 child-care centers was a 5-year-old girl who wandered away from a center and was found trying to cross the street by herself. No one at the center knew she was missing.
The center was fined $2,300 for that and other incidents and required to make staff changes. Its owner said she has fixed the problems, and officials said the state feels the center is trying to improve.
The newspaper’s findings raise questions about the quality of child care provided by some of the 371 centers and 85 in-home programs the state licenses in Pima County and the state’s ability to monitor those programs.
The state health department’s Child Care Licensing Office has 35 inspectors who monitor the 2,840 centers and group homes the department licenses statewide. That averages out to 82 programs per inspector.
8 inspectors cover 670 centers
The department’s Tucson office has eight child-care inspectors who cover about 670 centers and homes in seven counties — about 84 per inspector.
Those numbers compare favorably with the national average of 130 programs per child-care inspector, according to the National Child Care Information Center.
But Lisa Wynn, who oversees the health department’s licensing division, said the state is running behind on annual inspections for 376 programs, although it keeps up with complaint investigations.
Arizona requires one annual inspection of each child-care center and two for each home, and an additional inspection any time a complaint is filed.
The state usually works to help centers stay open even after inspectors find serious problems, Ms. Wynn said. But she said the exception is when centers can’t change or show that they are not willing to change.
While some centers do a great job, “some facilities may only be able to concentrate on minimum standards. We’re only asking them to meet the minimum standards,” said Lourdes Ochoa, the state’s director of child-care licensing.
Tougher standards needed, some say
Some experts say the state needs to get tougher.
“Why won’t our state close down centers when we have these kinds of violations?” asked Diane Umstead, vice president of the Southern Arizona Association for the Education of Young Children. “No one child should be injured or hurt in any way.”
While Pima County’s 456 child-care programs equal about 16 percent of the statewide total, Pima County programs have had 1,205 substantiated complaints since July 2003, or a third of the 3,633 substantiated complaints statewide.
And compared with Phoenix, Tucson-area centers had only a slightly smaller portion of the state’s 277 enforcement actions from July 1, 2003, through June 30 of this year: 22 percent, compared with 27 percent in Phoenix.
Most centers struggle to overcome a chronic shortage of well-trained workers and the state’s below-market-rate subsidies for low-income children, said LaVonne Douville, a child-care expert with United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizona.
“That doesn’t excuse centers for poor quality, but it explains why it does happen,” she said.
Experts said child-care centers should provide not only a safe place for kids to spend their time, but also a jump on learning — especially for the youngest kids in their care.