Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 25, 1993 TAG: 9301250271
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
EQUAL PROTECTION FOR CHILD CARE
SAFE, PROPER care for young children is vitally important to working parents. Obviously, that also includes the working poor, who often must scrounge to find the cheapest child care they can.Unfortunately, the cheapest may not always be safe and proper. The cheapest may be in unlicensed day-care facilities where the state now has no authority to mandate even basic health and safety standards. Children of the working poor in such situations may receive substandard care.
Which is plainly wrong. The General Assembly should not hesitate to adopt reforms of child day-care laws designed to protect all children, and their parents, against lax operators of day care.
The proposed reforms, coming out of the Commission on Early Childhood and Child Day Care Development, would still allow private providers to care for as many as five unrelated children in their homes, without a license. That leaves plenty of room for the kind of informal, child-care settings on which many families have come to depend.
But these at-home providers could no longer keep an unlimited number of their relatives' children.
As some unlicensed home providers complain, that might put some aunties and grandmas out of business. "It really hurts grandmothers who are trying to help their families meet ends and still need to make a little money," said Adaline Glazer, founder of a group that is fighting the reforms. "The whole proposal seems to be anti-family."
No, it is not. It's simply saying that if numerous grandchildren, nieces and nephews (or those listed as such by the operators) are to be kept together under one roof, there must be basic safety precautions. Smoke detectors, for instance.
The recommended changes - in what are considered among the weakest child day-care laws in the nation - would also end a 13-year rule that prevents inspectors from investigating child-care complaints at religious institutions.
Additionally, even though church-run facilities could remain exempt from licensing, state inspectors would have the right to enter them annually to ascertain that health-and-safety requirements are being followed.
That is not an infringement of constitutionally guaranteed separation of church and state. It merely extends equal protection of the law to children who are cared for in church-affiliated centers.
An estimated $1.5 million a year will be needed to support the reforms; $1.4 million of which would be to hire extra inspectors for additional centers that would have to be licensed under the proposed new regulations.
That is a modest amount for the state to invest in the welfare of an estimated 600,000 children who require day care. Without further ado, the assembly should make that investment.