New Proposed Regulation

Notify parents and the department when there is a lapse in supervision.

8VAC20-781-400 Parent communication and notification

C. The center shall notify the parent immediately and provide written documentation pursuant to subsection B of this section if the following incidents occur:

4. A situation in which the child’s whereabouts is or was unknown, including a lost or missing child, a child left unattended in a vehicle or on the playground, or a child who wandered away unattended from the facility or assigned group.

*AND*

8VAC20-781-70 Attendance records; reporting

C. The center shall inform the superintendent as soon as practicable, but not to exceed one business day, of the circumstances surrounding the following incidents:

4. A situation in which a child’s whereabouts was unknown, including a child left unattended or unsupervised, a lost or missing child, or a child who wandered away unattended from the facility.

Is the proposed regulation regulating something that is happening or likely to happen?

Yes. One of the things that the child care standards regulate is incident reporting. There have been recent cases in which children have wandered away from facilities or been left unsupervised and the current licensing standards only require reporting of a missing child when local authorities have been contacted for help. We agree that there is a need for an update in the requirements for communication.

Is this a health or safety concern?

Yes, young children need the continuous care of a trusted adult. The language here is quite unclear. If a child is hiding in a classroom as the rest of the class goes outside they have been separated from their group? Does it matter if it is one minute, five minutes, or a half an hour? If the child runs away in a dysregulated state at what point are they lost? If a child is left on a playground with another class but they were technically not alone, does that need to be reported?

What is the appropriate regulation to address the safety concern?

Overall, we think reporting and tracking incidents is good. We think notifying parents about lapses in supervision is a good thing (8VAC20-781-400 C 4). We also think that parental notification is sufficient and notifying the department (8VAC20-781-70 C 4) is unnecessary and likely to cause unintended consequences.

We would like to see the notification of the department removed or kept as currently written in the standards. At the very least clarification is needed. Would a child who hid in the loft during the transition outside but then was noticed by the teachers one minute later warrant a report to the department? These regulations should focus on clear observable standards and they are not clear.

What are the possible unintended consequences of the current proposed regulation?

If the regulation goes into effect as written we think there are a number of possible unintended consequences that could seriously impact children, families, and teachers.

There is a culture of policing, licensing inspectors are seen as police by educators and that creates a significant amount of stress in early childhood programs. Adding requirements like this amplifies that dynamic and will add stress in a field in which retention is already difficult.

Reporting to the department provides a paperwork burden to the department both in managing incoming reports and in deciding which ones warrant further investigation. The inspection system is already burdened by the injury reporting that was added a few years ago and it is already unclear what warrants further inspection. This is an area of concern that is ripe for biased implementation of the standards and this proposed regulation will likely make that worse.

It is unclear what is required to be reported which will likely lead to over and under reporting which will lead to more licensing violations for not properly reporting. Programs that report more will be seen as neglecting their supervision requirements while small lapses simply go unreported at other programs.

If everything that could possibly meet this standard is reported there will be a massive amount of reports to the department. Those of us with young children know that they hide or run away at times. There are times where you get to the hallway and do your second count only to find someone was hiding. Those systems working and quickly getting the child back to their group should not be called out. Even in high quality programs there are times in which there are lapses in supervision.

If the stress above and the pressure to avoid any types of supervision lapse becomes serious children will be impacted. Children who run away or hide will be expelled from early childhood programs because programs fear that their license will be threatened if they make these reports. Children feel the stress of their adults and children who are already struggling will be most impacted. There are staggering statistics about the long term downstream effects of expulsion from early childhood programs and this regulation could further marginalize children whose response to stress is to flee.

We would like 8VAC20-781-70 C 4 removed from the proposed regulation.