When day care poses a dilemma
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- September
- 17
This morning, after reading this story this story, I found myself talking aloud. To myself.
The case, briefly: Collette A. Barnes, who has a home day care businesses in Stamford, Conn. is free on bail, after being charged with a number of crimes, including leaving her 14-year-old daughter in charge of a whole bunch of kids, hosting a child care facility in a house in need of cleaning and serious repairs (not to mention the possibility of lead paint in the home), and bunch of other problems. It gets worse: Apparently Barnes left her day care business in another adult’s hands while she went to Florida to bring her father to NY for a visit. The adult backed out of the deal and then Barnes’ mother was supposed to take over. But when inspectors paid a surprise visit to the home, no adult was with the kids and the 14-year-old was in charge.
No doubt, this is bad. And if I had a kid there, I would probably take him out. Pronto. But a parent interviewed for the story, who leaves four children in Barnes’ care, says she has very few other options for care. At least care that she can afford and that will work with her fluctuating work schedule. She’s considering sending her kids to her mother in Florida if she can’t find care while Barnes’ business is shut down.
I empathized with this parent: She feels, despite all evidence to the contrary, this is good care for her kids. Barnes reads to the kids and helps them with potty training, she says. Those are good qualities, yes. But then Barnes leaves the state without a responsible adult in charge of her business? That’s unfathomable, in my view. Yet, when your options are limited, you overlook a lot of things.
Still, Barnes faces the possibility of going to jail for 48 years, if she’s found guilty of all the charges. Certainly, I thought to myself, she should never operated a day care facility again and should find another line of work. She made gross errors and poor judgment calls all around. And, as a police officer investigating the case said, she’s just very fortunate that this didn’t end disastrously. But 48 years in prison? I don’t know.
What do you think?
This entry was posted
on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 4:12 pm by Gayle T. Williams.
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She’ll never get 48 years in prison. We need some serious truth in sentencing. I suspect she won’t get prison time at all.
I’m not sure she deserves prison time. What she did was irresponsible, not malicious. Maybe there could be an arrangement whereby if she’s ever caught running a day care facility again, she goes to jail. I don’t see the point of putting her in prison at this point.
On the larger issue, I think cases like this are a symptom of the fact that we have devalued child care as a society. We have made it effectively a minimum wage profession, and we have yet to fill the void that was created when most mothers switched from being full-time mothers who didn’t work to full-time workers. The steep increase in kids being raised in single parent homes has exacerbated the situation.
For those with two reasonable incomes, good child care options are generally available. But for those with a limited income, and without family available to help, it gets much harder. Like most other things, the quality of what you get depends upon what you’re willing and able to pay, and nothing we’ve done to get around that little rule seems to work.
I have to agree, I dont think prison is a suitable punishment.
Losing a license is probably the best they can do, in this situation. Its a fitting punishment for the crime.
Prison should only come into question, if a child had been injured as a result. She should count herself lucky that it didnt happen.
I agree that she should absolutely lose her license to operate a day care facility. She has obviously shown she is not responsible enough to care for children. Forty eight years seems like an incredibly long time, however. I assume that’s the amount of counts against her times each child in her care? I empathize with the parent too. Finding affordable child care is difficult. But the day care operator is very lucky that none of the children were harmed accidentally while a 14 year old was in charge.
She should definitely lose her license to operate a day care in any state. She should also be prohibited from ever working in a day care in any capacity. Should she serve a prison sentence? My opinion is no but she should be sentenced to do community service work for a year but not 48 years.
Finding daycare is difficult but the parents that use that “center” should be glad the authorities shut it down. Does the woman deserve 48 years in jail? No. But she should never be allowed to watch children again and should be fined heavily. Where are the right to lifers to help out?
I agree. What she did was terrible, but 48 years is way too excessive. She should have her license revoked and sentenced to probation or community service. I don’t know if New Jersey requires tnis, but home day care operators need to go through re-certification every few years. That includes taking required classes and training on becoming more effective providers. Teachers are required to take certification exams among other requirements and day care providers who primarily care for young children should as well.
The state also has a responsibility to assist these parents and families with finding suitable day care, such as providing a list of suitable licensed providers in the area, vouchers, etc. As a parent, I know about the tremendous challenges with finding day care you can trust. It can be very tenuous, given the fact that you are leaving your child with someone you need to trust for at last 8 hours a day. The stress can be immense, especially after you think you found a suitable provider and quite the opposite occurs. The guilt is overwhelming. The parents in this case in NJ need to know that there is help for them and the state has the responsibility to improve standards and certification of daycare providers so that this does not happen again.
Her business absolutely needs to be shut down, permanently and she needs to be fined. The state should step in to help her CAREER WISE so that she can sustain a livelyhood and pay back the fine.
As for the children, the state needs to step in as well, contact the parents/guardian(s) and FIND and/or PROVIDE affordable daycare for these people. There’s private AND public funding all over the place that the state should be able to tap into to assist these people. Everyone is entitled to daycare no matter what economic status they’re in.
The state needs to be pressed and pressed hard.
Most recently, my day care was closed down because the owner handed in her license. She assumed all of the parents were ok with this. This meant no state supervision, they were just a bother to her. Once we were “caught” and left without daycare, parents running around the county to find other options, we started to realize the woman we left our children with was a bit off. She told us we could still leave our kids in her care, if the state showed up she would hide them in the back room or put them in the car and drive them around. We shared this with the state. They didn’t seem to hear what we were saying. Nonetheless, she has her license back 3 months later, is operating under a new name and there are NO blemishes on her record. For all parents out there looking for daycare, PLEASE, suck it up and go to a real day care facility. They all do a great job caring for your babies. The pain and agony that the kids and the parents went through was way too much. Do your research and get lots and lots of references. These facilities at a home or at a center should all be following the rules!