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NightOwl 10:16 AM 08-02-2015
Originally Posted by Sugar Magnolia:
I totally get what you are saying, and its definitely unacceptable for this behavior to be allowed or encouraged at home, this did not happen at home. This happened under the watch of the provider. 4 staff members failed to provide adequate supervision. Period. The center did not have appropriate security in the form of a secure latch or motion sensor alarms. The staff member in charge of this child should absolutely be terminated. The center needs immediate security upgrades. I don't think it's fair to put this entirely on the parents. This child should have been terminated before this happened.

This post really bothers me. Everything from the lack of supervision of a child with a KNOWN history of escape attempts, police NOT being called, (we don't even know if the OP self reported this to licensing), the mom's alleged response, the lack of proper latches, to the OP implying it's the parents fault somehow. We are here to give advice, and my advice is for the center to accept responsibility and make immediate changes in staff and security. Had something serious or even deadly happened to this child, we'd all be wringing our hands and lamenting a tragedy that could have easily been prevented. Personally, I'm making sure head counts are done more often outside, checking my latches and making sure my contact alarms have fresh batteries.
You hit the nail on the head, Robin. This is 100% the responsibility of the op and her staff. She knew the child was a runner and didn't take the proper precautions to keep the child safe, either with locks, posting staff at the gate, alarms that sound when a gate opens, etc. If she felt it was beyond her capacity to take these extra steps, then she should've let the child go a long time ago. You cannot blame a kid for being curious, adventurous, etc, nor can you blame a parent for their child escaping when the parent wasn't even there and the staff KNEW she was a runner. Even if it's allowed to some degree at home, that doesn't make it ok to not take preventative measures to keep the child safe at daycare. If the child is allowed to climb the fence at home, do we allow it at daycare? If the child eats chocolate cake for breakfast at home, do we allow that too? Just because one thing is acceptable or "no big deal" at home, doesn't mean we allow it (or allow it passively because we didn't do anything to prevent it) at daycare. When cps shows up to investigate, will they be like "ohhhh it's allowed at home so you allowed it to happen here? Well, that's a different ballgame then. We'll just be on our way..." Absolutely not. They care about what the center does, what precautions they take, who was in charge of the child at the time of the incident, if the center is providing adequate supervision and safety, etc.
And frankly, I'm a little disturbed at the amount of people here who would place the blame on the child/parent and would term the child because of the staff's and the management's negligence.
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