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If you make a policy that requires all daycares/babysitters in their home/early child headstarts to contact parents if a 3 year old or younger is not dropped off as predicted, you've got a huge thing to manage. Monumental effort is too weak a word.
How do you get the info out to daycares? How do you enforce it? What exactly is the procedure - 1/2 hour after expected? An hour? What will the daycare do if the parent doesn't respond? Will the daycare then be required to follow up with a call to 911 for a well check, or a call to the employers of the parents? Again, within what time frame?
For parents who have some variability when they drop the child off, say, sometime between 7:30 and 8:30, when do you start the ticking time clock for the text reminder?
The thought that "all you'd have to do is . . .", and it's so little effort, is not true.
It's huge to make a policy change like that for caregivers.
When all the parents have to do, again, is put a shoe or phone on the diaper bag.
There. That requires zero government intervention and follow up and regulation, because it's the parents choice to do it or not.
I wasn't advocating that it be a dreaded "government regulation" but rather that day cares implement this policy on their own. Some actually do.
Again, making a call or sending a text for occasional missing child isn't going to take a "monumental effort" on the part of the average day care.
I certainly agreed with you there, from my very first post in this thread.
Yes, it would be nice if daycares would consider implementing this. That sort of follow through is always nice, and usually appreciated.
Requiring it is where the whole thing falls apart and the whole thing becomes a headache.
But yes, as I said, daycares certainly can make a decision on their own to do it if they would like.
So, what do you think about the statement by another poster that if a daycare has a practice (not a policy, not a rule or law, but just a practice) of calling when a child is absent, and if for some reason they fail to call on one occasion, which happens to be the time a child dies because that parent left them in the car, then the daycare is legally liable and can be sued?
That poster indicated it would be much better and safer--safer for the daycare, that is--if daycares do not call to check up on absent children, ever.
So, what do you think about the statement by another poster that if a daycare has a practice (not a policy, not a rule or law, but just a practice) of calling when a child is absent, and if for some reason they fail to call on one occasion, which happens to be the time a child dies because that parent left them in the car, then the daycare is legally liable and can be sued?
That poster indicated it would be much better and safer--safer for the daycare, that is--if daycares do not call to check up on absent children, ever.
That's absolutely a possibility. Whenever you make it your standard procedure to safety net someone, and then you fail to provide that safety net for their carelessness, you can expect to be sued and often lose, because you didn't protect someone from themselves.
It is not the daycare provider's responsibility to prevent a parent from leaving a child in a car. Any malfunction in the messaging system would be an opportunity to sue the daycare provider for failure to police the parent's behavior. The parent could still miss or ignore the message. No one is going to want to run a daycare if they are going to be held responsible for the actions of parents who aren't even on their premises. It is not reasonable to put the burden on the daycare provider.
Lyn Balfour's sitter was calling her all day to ask why she didn't drop off the baby that morning. Her phone was in her purse at her desk, and she was in meetings all day. She heard the first message at 3:30 in the afternoon, and that's when she knew she'd never dropped him off.
Lyn Balfour's sitter was calling her all day to ask why she didn't drop off the baby that morning. Her phone was in her purse at her desk, and she was in meetings all day. She heard the first message at 3:30 in the afternoon, and that's when she knew she'd never dropped him off.
Now you're being silly, and reaching. The above commentary was regarding it hypothetically being a *usual procedure* at a given daycare, but the daycare does *NOT* call, and then a child dies.
The sitter *called.* That make even policy v. no policy moot. So, not a great analogy. There's just no way to make it fit.
Now you're being silly, and reaching. The above commentary was regarding it hypothetically being a *usual procedure* at a given daycare, but the daycare does *NOT* call, and then a child dies.
The sitter *called.* That make even policy v. no policy moot. So, not a great analogy. There's just no way to make it fit.
Not at all. I'm still trying to understand this statement:
Quote:
Any malfunction in the messaging system would be an opportunity to sue the daycare provider for failure to police the parent's behavior. The parent could still miss or ignore the message.
Seems to me the poster was stating a parent could sue if they missed or ignored the message. So a daycare should definitely never call about an absent child, because they're going to be sued whether the message is received or not.
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