Not all Home Day Cares are Evil

So recently here in KW a woman was charged with poisoning children in her care when she ran an unlicensed home day care.
article: http://www.therecord.com/news-story/3903862-two-children-allegedly-poisoned-kitchener-daycare-owner-charged/

This has led to a lot of comments in various groups I follow and even things said in people I know Facebook statuses, twitter feeds, google+ etc.
Derogatory comments about how horrible home day cares are and how could parents be so stupid to use them.

Now that being said a significantly smaller handful have pointed out that this is the reason why LICENSED home day cares are very important and that parents really need to stop skimping out and pay the extra money for a LICENSED provider.

Don't get me wrong, being licensed does not guarantee nothing will ever happen, but just as many things go wrong in licensed centres.
It is the unfortunate reality of our world.  Nothing is perfect.

I do take offence to everyone who has made derogatory comments against home day care providers.

One idiot psycho's actions does not give you the right to paint the rest of us with the same brush.

I am for licensing of all home day cares.  Too many people push the boundaries with unlicensed day cares, especially with regards to ratio.

The legislation on home day care is kinda useless in explaining how it deals with unlicensed child care.
How I understand it is, that it is not illegal to run an unlicensed home day care until something goes wrong.
Which is my opinion is wrong.  It should just be not allowed.

This is not to say all unlicensed home child cares are bad.  I know several wonderful providers, but I know just as many terrible, I can't believe people leave their children with them, providers.

Being licensed, I am monitored monthly.  I have to maintain the safety standards outlined by the Day Nursery Act.  I am required to fill out and keep an on going daily log book of everything that happens in my care.  So every time your child falls down and it leaves a mark or was a bad enough I feel it warrants being written down, I write it down.
I write down when a child arrives with bruises, scratches etc.
Why? Because then it is documented that those didn't happen at my house.
I took a school kid for back up once whom I picked up from school, who had scratched his knees there and I didn't write it down.
He then told his mom after she picked him up the cat that hid behind the couch the whole day scratched him.  This led to a battle in them trying to force me to keep my cats locked up.  I told them they could fire me, but I wasn't locking up the cats that weren't in the presence of the children that day at all and weren't responsible.
All because a 6 year old lied to his mother.
So from that point on I have always recored when a child comes with a mark on them that did not occur here.
This is called covering my ass in layman's terms.

Because we live in a world of paranoia.

Which is why it pisses me off so many of my friends and their friends have jumped on the band wagon that all home day care is evil in light of the recent reports in the news.
Because by making those comments you are directly insulting me and disrespecting me and painting me as a horrible, irresponsible person who doesn't have a fucking clue what they are doing.

I unlike most home day care providers am a Registered Early Childhood Educator.  This means I have my Early Childhood Education diploma and I am registered with the College of Early Childhood Educators.
This means I have taken classes in child development, curriculum planning, the Day Nursery Act and so forth.

The fact is most home day care providers have little to no training with regards to children.  The Licensed providers are at least given manuals to read and guidelines to follow and both the Region and Wee Watch provide example activities etc to do with the children.
Licensed providers have undergone both a Family and Children Services check as well as a Police check.
They must have the First Aid and CPR up to date.
They have set guidelines for meals and snacks, mandatory outside time and some basic guidelines for curriculum planning and child development.

Unlicensed providers don't have to do any of those things or learn any of those things  if they don't want to.  They can stick your child in front of the tv and do nothing with them all day.  They can also feed them anything they want and not have to provide balanced meals and nutritious snacks.

They have no one checking up on them and no one to hold them accountable.

And that is why I think home child care should be licensed.

But it won't happen.

Time and time again over the years children have died in unlicensed settings and the legislation remains the same.

Why?  Because neither provincial or the federal government want to deal with it.  They do not want to invest the time or money in to coming up with a policy or legislation that mandates all home day cares must be licensed and what that would look like.

You want to point fingers, then point them at the politicians who continue to allow unlicensed child care to unregulated and children to suffer.