Investigators: State inaction leaves kids open to harm

10:15 AM PST on Wednesday, November 17, 2004

By SUSANNAH FRAME / KING 5 News

There are thousands of daycares in Washington, and every year, dozens are shut down because they put children at risk.

But a KING 5 Investigation raises a tough new question: does the state take too long to get children out of harms way?

Most daycares in Washington are safe, clean places for children.

But we started going through records of closed daycares and found a disturbing trend.

The state takes months, sometimes years to act when it spots problems, putting children at risk.

Hailee Rhodes is a loving, adored child with a sparkle in her eye.

But she'll never be the same little girl she was before attending Danette's Daycare in Spokane.

Proprietor Danette Zaring threw Hailee to the floor in January of this year causing severe brain damage.

"We're terrified, but we just go on day to day," said Chanin Carr, Hailee's mother. "We don't really look forward to the future, we just look forward to the next day."

Hailee survived, against the odds, but a lot of her language is lost. She can't walk. She screams for hours every night.

"I know that she's not the same girl anymore. But that's ok, she's still here with us," Carr said.

For years, state investigators had been documenting serious complaints against Danette's Daycare. Yet she was allowed to stay open.

So we wondered, how often does the state let bad day cares in Western Washington stay in business?

The KING 5 Investigators obtained documentation on 61 day cares closed down in the last three years.

We analyzed 582 pages of state documents and found that in one out of every three cases -- 30 percent of the time -- DSHS let problematic daycares stay open and did not follow a state law that says you "must revoke" a license after specific, serious violations.

Is the department then, breaking the law?

"I don't think our agency breaks the law," said Rachel Langen, who heads up all state licensed child care programs at DSHS.

She says they must consider the needs of the daycare business as well as the children.

"I've met folks who say these are our livelihoods, we need your assistance to be successful, so again, it's that balancing act between the needs of these small businesses and the children."

Here are some of the problematic daycares we found:

In Aberdeen, children had access to unsecured guns at a daycare center. It stayed open.

In Montesano, convicted felons were repeatedly found living and working on the premises. It stayed open.

In Renton, at the Kamal Kaur Daycare, the owner locked children in the bathroom, spanked them and pulled their hair as punishment.

That day care stayed open eight years after the first signs of trouble.

"That really frightens me," said Nina Auerbach, who runs a Seattle non-profit that helps ensure daycares are safe.

We hired her to review our documentation.

While she found the state did the right thing most of the time, the bad cases could have lasting effects.

"I think that there are some kids who have suffered as a result of that and that especially with what we know now about the importance of the early years, that's not a good situation. Some of these kids have probably suffered in a way that could impact them for the rest of their lives."

Langen says things are different now, that state employees have been told they can be more aggressive in revoking licenses.

"Revocation is a serious thing. You're shutting someone's business down. You're taking away their source of income. You're putting people of out work. It wasn't something they took lightly. You're putting kids out with parents having to scramble with different kinds of care. Those were the pressures that licensors were feeling," she said.

Two years ago Stephanie Cooper's company took over Cedar Park Daycare in Seattle.

"The floor was just rancid with urine and vomit. "Kids were" playing on it and rolling on it, you know babies."

The place is well run now, but back then, she found dirty diapers and garbage all around, a rat problem, and thick, black mold, covering several walls.

And the state knew there was trouble: We found 114 documented violations in six years of business.

KING

Hailee Rhodes

Years before Cedar Park was shut down, Child Protective Services investigators wrote, "there is a serious "risk of physical neglect" at the daycare ... and the daycare owner is 'emotionally abusing' the children."

"It should have been shut down," Cooper says. "That's disgraceful, it's disgusting and shame on them, there is no excuse for that."

Cedar Park finally got notice to close its doors with an official agreement between the owner, Gretchen Ball, and DSHS officials.

It said the daycare would close by Dec. 31, 2001.

But that didn't happen.

Ball continued to operate, and taxpayers helped make that happen.

In the three months following the deadline to close, the state paid ball nearly $26,000 to care for children on welfare.

"It makes no sense," says Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles

Kohl-Welles is a long-time advocate of safer daycares.

"It's really a travesty and an insult to taxpayers when here they have their money paying for a licensed child care facility that's under orders to close down.

"I believe we need to find out what could possibly be the rationale to all allow this to happen."

Back in Spokane, Hailee Rhodes is about to turn three. Her parents still don't know if she'll ever go to school, or write her name.

They hope her case is a wake up to a system giving some bad daycares too many chances.

Because of our investigation Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles is already meeting with DSHS officials to see what kind of legislation can be proposed to speed up the process.

In terms of the money, DSHS says the payouts were legitimate. Gretchen Ball wasn't accepting their certified mail with a demand to close. When the letter of revocation was hand-delivered, she finally shut down.