The law, the parents and the provider -responsibility

It is not the law in Ontario that a home day care provider must be licensed.
I can tell you right now almost half of the unlicensed providers don't even know the details of the laws they should be following with regards to health and safety including the fact they can only have up to 5 children under the age of 10 in care.

They don't even have to follow the same Day Nurseries Act break down we licensed providers must follow (Our 5 children must break down as such: 5 children under 5, No more than 4 of 5 children under 4, no more than 3 of those children under 3 and no more than 2 under 2 and 1 under one).

I can walk through my neighbourhood tomorrow and come across some where around 25 home day cares that are not licensed and ALL of them are breaking the law in some way.
The majority of them being over ratio.

So this brings us to the very tragic death of a 2 year old girl in Vaughn in an unlicensed home child care where 20+ children were found in total on the premises as well as several health and safety code violations.

20+ children  of which the ages were of an average of 3 and under.

Complaints were lodged a number of time in the six months leading up to the incident against the home for over crowding and the Ministry of Education did nothing.
Which is wrong.

But as the same time seriously how did the parents not notice something was wrong??

Apparently the woman running the place wouldn't let the parents past the inside of the front door.

Again seriously people that is a HUGE red flag warning sign.  What is she hiding?? Also as a parent myself, I would be wondering WHY can't I go inside? I don't understand what she could have told these parents to convince them that they had no right, because they did.

Yet people still willingly chose to leave their children there.

I don't understand. How can you as a parent not want to see where and what your child is doing in another person's house whom you are not related to?

How could you blindly leave your child without first seeing the conditions they were spending the majority of their day in??

I am a home day care provider and my house is pretty much open to the day care parents, within reason of course. As far as I am concerned, anywhere the kids go, the parents can go too.

Too many times I have overhead conversations at the park/library/grocery store/sitting on the bus that we day care providers are greedy and over charging for the privilege of sticking the children in front of the tv so we can kick back and surf the net while the parents do the real work out in the real world.

Excuse me? I don't think so.
Sadly yes there is a small proportion of home day care providers who sadly do just that, stick the kid in front of the tv and do as they please.
But we can find in any profession people who are terrible at their jobs.
That doesn't mean the rest of us are like that.

What I don't get is how this ignorant subset of parents seem to think their children magically learn about colours, shapes, ABCs, numbers, sharing, feelings, manners, seasons, matching etc etc.
They (the parents) are at work all day and I highly doubt the first thing they do when they get home after work and picking up the kids from day care is sit down and teach any of these concepts to their child at the end of a busy work day with supper needing to be cooked, children fed, bathed and readied for bed, laundry, dishes etc etc etc

Good safe home day care providers provide safe, loving, nurturing homes where children thrive and learn.
This also applies to centres too.

So as tragic and heart wrenching as it is that this two year old died and the parents are suing the government and the home day care provider, they will have to live with the fact that they too are responsible.

Because they willingly ignored what was wrong in front of them and chose to claim they didn't know any better.

I cannot accept the response of "Well I didn't know any better."

Not when we live in the digital age where you can find ALL of the pertinent information about what is legal and not legal child care wise in this province with a few key strokes. Not to mention what to look for in regards to good, quality day care home based or centre based.  You can even call up the County or Region you live in and they will email/mail/direct you to the PDF or web page they ALL have on what to look for as well as lists of people/centres to check out.

If you are going to pay someone to be the care giver for your child, going with the person who charges the least just to save yourself a few dollars is not the best idea.

Especially if they are by far under cutting the average going price per a day.

How are they able to offer it for so little?

What corners are they cutting?

What are you not seeing or being told?

If you as a parent, don't take the time to educate yourself before looking for quality day care, be it home day care or a centre, then you are also to blame when something tragic occurs.

Because this is your child. Your blood. Your pride and joy.  They are worth every effort and time spent researching and seeking out the best day care you can afford to place them into while you are at work. For your piece of mind and for your child to grow and flourish as well.
So if this means you have to eat out less or give up something frivolous in order to get a better provider, than do it.  You won't EVER regret that decision.

This doesn't mean tragedy won't ever happen.  Unfortunately life isn't fair in how it operates so yes bad things can still happen to good people even when they do all the right things.

For now all you can do is educate yourself, know your rights, know your child's rights, know your provider's rights, ask questions and expect transparency when it comes to your child and the care they are receiving whether they are at a centre or in a home day care.

Hopefully the government will get off its ass and do something useful before more children die, but I wouldn't hold my breath.