Child Injury Lawyer Blog
By David A. Wolf, Child Injury Lawyer Blog
Working parents rely upon day care centers so that the family can be supported and the child can be properly cared for during the work day. Many day care centers do an excellent job of educating, supervising, and caring for the children enrolled in the child care program. Other daycare centers, however, cut corners and end up harming the children that they are responsible for supervising. It is certainly unfortunate and tragic in many cases when a child suffers personal injuries in a day care center. While government monitoring and regulation can help weed out and close down bad day care centers, it is impossible for any form of governmental regulation to prevent all injuries from taking place.
One article mentioned that a single state had 115 instances where day care centers were not meeting the minimum child to staff ratios, thereby leaving young children unattended and increasing the likelihood of harm. See Mississippi Increases Oversight of Day Care Centers. Many day care centers are underfunded and simply cannot afford to maintain the appropriate number of employees to adequately supervise the number of children at the center. This problem is very serious for young children of all ages. Infants need constant supervision to prevent accidents such as rolling off of changing tables or swallowing small objects, and toddlers need constant supervision to ensure that they are learning how to share and play well with others as well as to prevent them from injuring themselves or others or trying to run away.