DATE: Tuesday, July 15, 1997                TAG: 9707150103

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ROBERT LITTLE, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: RICHMOND                          LENGTH:  121 lines

STUDY FINDS 700 DAY-CARE CENTERS ARE INSPECTED IMPROPERLY, IF AT ALL

More than 700 of Virginia's day-care facilities are not inspected for health and safety as often as required by law, a study released Monday found.

And some day-care centers - particularly in Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia, where there are more centers - are not being inspected at all.

Staff cuts in the state Department of Social Services are to blame, according to the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, the General Assembly's investigative arm. Budget cuts under Gov. George F. Allen have made it hard to fill some jobs and impossible to fill others.

As a result, inspectors have vastly inflated workloads, making it impossible to visit every center twice a year as the law requires. The average inspection - including checks of food preparation, staff-to-child ratio and toy safety, among other things - takes three or four hours. One inspector might have more than 100 facilities to watch.

The problem is not critical, nor is it anything new, the commission said. The state has never met its day-care inspection goals since the law was passed in 1992. Most facilities are inspected regularly, if not as often as the law requires.

But by finding $300,000 to hire inspectors, Virginia - which has a budget of nearly $1 billion - could inspect every day-care facility at least twice a year, with one of those coming unannounced, the commission said. To do otherwise, the report said, would compromise the safety of children in day care.

``If no complaints were received about a facility, it could go as long as three years without being visited,'' the commissioners pointed out in their 100-page report. ``This can potentially put the health and safety of the children in care at risk.''

That risk is only a potential, state officials stress. Much has been done to compensate for the inspections backlog until new employees are hired.

For instance, in Hampton Roads, where one inspector quit in February, 84 facilities are getting no routine inspections while the state fills the position. With just six inspectors responsible for 1,078 licensees, the others could not absorb the workload.

So inspectors are checking the ``red-flagged'' facilities in the interim, making sure that facilities pushed aside are the ones with the best records of meeting state regulations.

``We haven't reached a level of criticality where we're ignoring any problems,'' said Keith Chadwell, director of the Eastern Regional Office of Social Services. ``The facilities that aren't on our regularly scheduled monitoring visits are not what we consider part of our high-risk caseload.''

Spokespeople for the Department of Social Services said the problem is being solved. Candidates for vacancies in Hampton Roads and Fairfax will be interviewed this month.

``We are committed to meeting that statutory mandate,'' said Elizabeth Riopele, director of planning and policy for the Department of Social Services. ``We haven't done it yet, but we're going to get there.''

Finding money to pay new inspectors has not been a problem, JLARC's report suggested. Rather, administrative barriers have made the hirings cumbersome or impossible.

Inspectors who accepted the Allen administration's Workforce Transition Act buyout in 1995 saw their jobs stricken from the state budget. Vacancies from normal attrition are subject to the administration's hiring freeze. As such, they need approval from the department secretary and the state budget office before being filled, a process that can take up to a year.

If administration officials aren't worried about the impact of job cuts on day-care quality, the day-care inspectors seem to be, however. The commission surveyed the Department of Social Services' specialists and asked whether Virginia's day-care licensing and inspection procedures are ``adequate to protect the health and safety of children.'' Nearly two-thirds said no.

Said Arlington Del. Julia A. Connally: ``It does seem like a dramatic situation.''

The inspections problem was just one part of JLARC's study, ordered last year to update a sweeping review of the day-care system in the early 1990s. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

BETH BERGMAN/File photo

Another finding: State regulations should warn that letting infants

sleep on their stomachs can raise the risk of Sudden Infant Death

Syndrome.

Graphics

THE REPORT

What happened: Staff cuts in the state Department of Social

Services have left inspectors with vastly inflated workloads.

What it means: The problem still is not critical. Most facilities

are inspected regularly, if not as often as the law requires.

What would help: By finding $300,000 in its nearly $1 billion

budget to hire inspectors, Virginia could inspect every day-care

facility at least twice a year.

WHOM TO CALL

To check the status of your child's day-care center, call

491-3990.

The staff at the Eastern Regional Office, Department of Social

Services, will tell you when they last inspected and what they

found.

Be patient if you don't receive immediate answers; the staff may

be swamped with calls.

The office's hours: 8:15 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday

DAY-CARE UPDATES

Aside from criticizing low staffing, the report was largely

favorable, saying state inspectors do good jobs making sure day-care

facilities are safe and clean.

The commission also called for updating state day-care

regulations in several areas:

Felons now may provide in-home day care. People with records of

child abuse or other violence can't get a license, but the Joint

Legislative Audit and Review Commission recommends expanding the

disqualification to include all felonies, such as drug distribution.

State regulations have not kept up with medical research into

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Doctors generally tell parents to keep

infants from sleeping on their stomachs, but Virginia's day-care

regulations do not.

Parents often don't know whether a facility has violated health

and safety standards. The commission recommended a new law requiring

the centers to notify parents.

The state rarely uses ``intermediate'' steps to enforce day-care

regulations, choosing either to close a facility or do nothing at

all. The report recommended making other penalties easier to use,

such as restricting the number of children a center may accept.

- Robert Little

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