As we mentioned briefly last week, the federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office of Inspector General (OIG) has been conducting a national review of health and safety audits of childcare facilities. I just received the following via email directly from HHS and could not resist sharing:
HHS-OIG wrapped up a series of health and safety audits of childcare facilities with the release of two audits from Florida. Can families trust that childcare providers receiving federal subsidies offer a safe environment for children? Unfortunately, the answer is “no” as our audits discovered. A sizable 96 percent (218 out of 227) of childcare providers we inspected in our unannounced site visits had at least one health and safety violation.
Although the State licensing agency and counties conducted the required inspections, the instances of noncompliance occurred because the State laws and regulations allowed only for minimal oversight by the State licensing agency.
Registered providers were not inspected at all and were only required to register annually.
The State licensing agency did not ensure that all providers that received CCDF funds met the initial screening and rescreening documentation requirements along with staffing requirements.
As a result, the health and safety of children in these CCDF-funded providers may have been at risk.
The State licensing agency that did not explicitly concur or nonconcur with our recommendations. Instead, it requested information about which providers were associated with the health and safety issues we identified so that it could ensure that findings have been corrected. The State licensing agency also noted that it would continue to require providers to adhere to health and safety requirements and continue to emphasize the importance of operators being proactive in their efforts to maintain compliance with licensing standards at all times.
What a joke.
Again, this is the same agency equally tasked with regulating DRUG AND ALCOHOL TREATMENT PROVIDERS in Florida.
I am sure it is mostly the same across the entire United States.
Imagine, if you will, if we did not sufficiently fund the agencies which regulate restaurants, or hotels, or tattoos, or doctors. Do you really think that the private sector would police itself? Has free market capitalism ever self-policed itself when profits would be left on the table?
Has anyone visited Wall Street lately? How is that working out for us?
WAKE UP PEOPLE! I laugh at local governments who complain about people in recovery chain smoking in front of an IOP, or some kid who looks like Al Pacino from Scarface asking to open a detox.
There are dozens of laws strewn throughout Chapter 397, Florida Statutes, which are regularly flaunted, avoided, and ignored, and DCF does absolutely nothing about it?
Why?
Lack of training.
Lack of manpower.
Lack of morale.
Lack of purpose.
Why are you involved in this industry?
What’s your purpose?
There is nothing wrong with doing well, but you must first do “good.”
Thank you for allowing my afternoon rant.