I-Team: Statewide Daycare Database Hailed By DCF
If you're poor or a minority, your children have nearly twice the likelihood of attending a daycare with a questionable safety record. That's the result of a ground-breaking, first-of-its-kind investigation by the CBS4 I-Team. It's something not even the state of Florida has ever done. And I-Team Investigator Stephen Stock says it could change the way daycare is delivered for millions of children.
Take for instance the three examples below:
November, 2008, a little boy, unwatched by daycare workers in Homestead, falls more than six feet from the top of a playground set.
No one notices but an undercover CBS4 I-Team monitoring the daycare.
A week later the daycare's owner vows to make changes.
"If you tell me who was the person I will fire them," daycare owner Wanda Rabelo told CBS4 I-Team investigator Stephen Stock in October, 2008.
Even so, subsequent state inspection records from this past March show the daycare continues to struggle to comply with rules regarding sufficient staffing to watch all the children. Inspectors cited them for failure to maintain proper staff-to-children ratios in March, 2009.
Or take another example: a downtown Miami daycare. Back last September, its owner was unaware that it had been operating with 86 different violations of safety rules in the last two years. That is the highest number of violations in the county.
"What!?! You're kidding!?" daycare owner Berdine Smith said to I-Team investigator Stephen Stock when he showed her daycare's records to her.
Since then the very same daycare picked up two more violations during state safety inspections this spring.
Then take a daycare on Broward Boulevard in Lauderhill, a daycare where last fall a child accidentally pulled a pot of boiling hot water off a stove and onto his own face.
This March, Broward County officials moved to close the daycare down after it racked up 72 safety violations in two years, the highest in Broward County.
In March the daycare's owner defended her record saying she was following safety rules as best she could.
"These are not violations that are going to cost me financially let me put it that way," owner Tracye Wilkerson told I-Team investigator Stephen Stock in March, 2009.
Even so, on April 30th, 2009, owner Tracye Wilkerson gave up her license and closed the daycare's doors after Broward County Child Services officials cited her again and moved to force the daycare to shut down.
Beyond these violations, each of these daycares has another thing in common.
They are located in low income communities or in communities where US Census data shows populations with more than half the residents are either African-American or Hispanic.
These are communities that a CBS4 I-Team investigation has discovered have a higher likelihood of having troubled daycares than other neighborhoods in Florida.
This information is the result of a year-long I-Team investigation that started with our groundbreaking database which can be found on-line in an easy to access, continuously, updated collection of state of Florida daycare inspection reports.
You can still find the searchable database by clicking on the link here.
It is an interactive map where, for the first time, anyone can look at the inspection record of any state licensed daycare anywhere in Florida. Only in counties where local agencies self-regulate daycares, such as Brevard County, do state inspection records not show up in this database.
"The biggest discrepancy was race," said Jeremy Milarsky, former Library Database Director at the National Institute of Computer Assisted Reporting (NICAR).
Milarsky and his team at NICAR and Investigative Reporters' and Editors led a team that analyzed every state inspection report for every state licensed daycare in Florida, about 20 thousand records. They then compared those inspection record trends with US Census data.
"We were able to see evidence of poor performing daycares in areas where the incomes were lower than average and where the percentage of resident who were minorities were higher than average," said Milarsky.
So high, in fact, two years of daycare inspection data shows that if you live in a poor or African American community you have almost twice the likelihood of having your child attend a daycare with numerous failures on its safety inspection record.
The computer data analysis of DCF state inspection data for the entire state of Florida shows:
In communities with African American majorities as defined by US Census data, there is a 45% increase in poorly performing daycares.
In communities with lower than average income it's a 42% increase in poorly performing daycares.
In communities with Hispanic majorities as defined by US Census data, there is a 9% increase in poorly performing daycares in that neighborhood.
"It gives us more information on which to have the discussion on early childcare and early childcare performance," Milarsky said of the in-depth social analysis.
"We need folks like you (at the CBS4 I-Team)," said the top advocate for child safety in Florida, DCF Secretary George Sheldon.
The Secretary of Florida's Department of Children and Families admits his agency has not done the kind of in-depth, computer analysis of social trends involving populations and daycares that the CBS4 I-Team did.
DCF Secretary George Sheldon says the I-Team's work will spur DCF to do better.
"It does very little good if I have a database and the information is in the database, and I don't know how to mine that information," Sheldon said.
While the I-Team's findings didn't surprise him, Secretary Sheldon says it confirms what has been whispered in backrooms but never acknowledged openly in policy discussions.
"I think knowing it empowers us," DCF Secretary Sheldon said. "I think we've got to do a better job in terms of providing information to the public. We've got to a do better job of closing facilities down."
While troubled by our findings, daycare experts at DCF say wealth and income do not have to add up to poor daycare.
And they have just the proof in an innovative model daycare set up to train prospective daycare owners.
Coming up in our follow up report, the CBS4 I-Team will take you behind the scenes and show you how, when it comes to safe quality daycare, it doesn't take a lot of money, just a lot of commitment.
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