TEXAS — "I know a lot of parents would love to see a center that has zero citations, but when you look at the number of standards that we have, that's really a difficult task to meet every standard in every minute of the day of operation," says Connie Presley, who is a program administrator with the Child Care Licensing Division of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services is responsible for monitoring compliance with state standards, establishing procedures for revoking a license, and providing appeal mechanisms.
In Texas, any full- or part-time child care center with seven or more children for fewer than 24 hours per day at a location other than the permit holder’s home must be licensed by the state. Every six years, Texas evaluates its policies for day care facilities to determine if any changes or amendments should be made.
"That is one of the reasons why we assigned risk levels so parents can understand, 'Yes, this center may have citations, but they're low risk things.'"There are hundreds of minimum standards that child care facilities must maintain. Each are listed and explained in great detail in the 220-paged regulations outline on websites of Texas Health & Human Services Commission and the Department of Family & Protective Services.
The standards are weighted based on risk to children and are divided in five categories: high, medium-high, medium, medium-low and low level.
"Supervising children at all time is high risk," says Presley. "Leaving a child unattended in a vehicle is high risk. If you're child is an infant and it's related to safe sleep, that's going to be a red flag for you."
Presley says there are other factors parents should consider when researching a specific facility.
"They'd want to look at specifically the standards related to child-caregiver ratio, the standards related to supervision, and to caregiver responsibility."
Presley says child to adult ratio is an important standard.Texas is among the states allowing the highest number of children per caregiver.
"We will look at every standard in a two-year period, and at a minimum, inspect once a year. Whether we inspect more often will depend on their compliance history."
HHSC offers a child care search tool on its website where parents can view the results of any inspections conducted at the facility over the last three years.
"One of the main things i tell parents is, 'if you're not comfortable there, your child won't be comfortable there," says Presley.
She says that when parents look at the history of a childcare facility, it is also important to keep in mind how long ago the citation was issued.
"Be informed, be educated, find out everything you can."