Deadly day cares: Lax regulation blamed in child deaths

The Wichita Eagle, Aug. 13, 2016

http://www.kansas.com/news/local/article95526932.html

By Kelsey Ryan

 

Within his first week at Karin’s Kids day care, 5-month-old Bryce Mosier had severe diaper rash.

He had sat for hours in a wet diaper after playing in a swimming pool. Another time, his mom came to pick him up and found him asleep on his stomach, despite instructions to lay him on his back – a basic safe-sleep practice.

His parents, Tina Williams and Brock Mosier, thought about using another day care.

But family members had recommended Karin’s Kids, operated by Karin Patterson. They decided to give Patterson one more try because Bryce had only been there a few weeks.

Tina Williams remembers that last morning clearly.

Bryce gibber-jabbered in his bouncy chair as Tina got ready for work. Brock was still asleep.

When they got to day care, Tina gave Bryce a kiss.

“I love you, Beans,” she said – his nickname because Tina ate so many burritos while pregnant.

Later that day, Patterson put Bryce down for a nap. He was on his stomach on a doubled-over Pokemon sleeping bag.

He never woke up.

Only after Bryce’s death did his parents learn that state inspectors had questioned Patterson’s ability to care for children.

Bryce’s parents – and the parents of other children who have died or been injured in Kansas day cares – say the state needs to do more to protect children. Among their concerns:

▪ Home day care providers are required to report deaths, but not injuries. The state has no idea how many children are injured in day cares each year.

▪ A 2010 state law required the state health department to establish an online database of child care providers with information about complaints. But inspection reports of day care providers are difficult for parents to find online, the links are incorrect, and complaints and inspection findings are not detailed.

▪ Day care providers are not required to have insurance under Kansas child care law, nor are they required to tell parents that they have no insurance.

▪ The number of inspectors has gone from 112 to 90 in the past four years, according to the state.

▪ The state has no estimate of the number of day cares that are unlicensed – or who operates them. People who watch more than two children are supposed to be licensed and undergo training and inspections. But the state has no penalty for those who don’t.

“You wouldn’t let somebody open a Bingo parlor and not be regulated by the state,” said Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka. “So it really is not right that we would allow somebody to open up a day care facility and not be subject to a penalty should they not be licensed.”

‘Royal battle’

Bryce is one of 45 children who died in Kansas day cares from 2007 to 2015, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

More than half of those deaths were in licensed day care homes regulated by the state – day cares like Karin’s Kids.

So far this year, the state health department has investigated two child day care deaths in unlicensed day care homes, including a 3-year-old girl who drowned in Wichita in June.

Kelly said it is time for the Legislature to revisit the child care law.

In 2010, she championed Lexie’s Law, named for 13-month-old Lexie Engelman, who died from injuries at a Johnson County day care in 2004. The law was the first major change to the state’s child care standards in more than three decades.

It required all licensed day cares to have an annual inspection, additional health and safety training related to SIDS and safe sleep, child development, CPR and first aid. Lexie’s Law also eliminated an entire category of day care providers – “registered” day cares, which could care for up to six children but were inspected only in response to complaints.

“It’s been in effect long enough now we know what’s working and we can also find out what’s not working,” Kelly said.

Kelly said she worries that state cuts to local health departments, which do most of the inspections, don’t give them the resources to have investigative units and can only respond to crises.

She also wants inspection information online where parents can easily find it.

“I really wanted to be able to provide more information and really help parents in decision making. I was disappointed that even if they were doing it right, it still wasn’t robust enough,” Kelly said.

“The ability of parents to access good information, and the ability of our contracted health departments to roust out unlicensed providers, with teeth – to put a penalty on that – those are some things I’d like to see if we address this issue again,” she said.

State law requires a license for anyone who cares for one or two children who are not related to them for more than a combined total of 20 hours a week, or if they watch more than two children who are not related to them. Licenses aren’t required if children are watched in their own homes.

But Kelly is concerned that there is no state penalty for those who choose not to become licensed. Individual counties can determine a penalty, if any, and it’s not clear if those are enforced only after an incident has occurred.

With the recent primary election results, which sawmoderate Republicans gain seats in the Legislature, Kelly said there may be support to strengthen the law.

In 2010, when Lexie’s Law was being debated, many of those opposed were small-government advocates who said regulating day cares would create a literal nanny state, she said.

It was a “royal battle” to get the law passed, she said.

“They’d throw the cloak of small business, that we were going to be ‘putting these people out of business’ or that we’re ‘going to deplete child care access,’ ” Kelly said.

“The other thing was this ‘all in the family’ thing – that families should have total control. If Grandma wanted to have 14 kids in her house, we shouldn’t be concerned with that. ‘She knows best.’ ”

‘Recommend enforcement’

When a Wichita police officer called Tina Williams, Bryce Mosier’s mother, that afternoon to ask questions about what happened at Karin’s Kids on Aug. 4, 2011, Williams had no idea what he was talking about.

No one had told her that her son was in the hospital, she said, and that they were trying to resuscitate him.

Eventually, the family discovered details about Bryce’s death, including that he died on his stomach – an unsafe position for sleeping.

The family filed a request to the state under the Kansas Open Records Act and paid $100 for Karin Patterson’s inspection reports.

The state had more than 270 pages of documents revealing that Patterson had been convicted of attempted possession of cocaine in the 1980s, which was later expunged from her record; that she had left a sleeping infant in a van on a hot August day while she went to a garage sale; and that she had children sleeping in a basement utility room with a water heater, suitcases and a dog cage.

One report said: “RECOMMEND ENFORCEMENT ACTION BEFORE THESE CHILDREN ARE MORE NEGLECTED!”

In 2003, the state tried to revoke Patterson’s license for her previous cocaine charge, but she appealed.

Patterson did not return calls and messages seeking comment for this story.

Bryce’s parents think Patterson should not have been allowed to continue to watch children based on what was in the reports.

“Why is something so important almost hidden? And so difficult to get to? For somebody to have all that information and the state to still allow her to watch kids – I think the state messed up big,” said Brock Mosier.

Had they known that information before Bryce’s death, they would never have taken him there, his parents said.

“As a parent, you should be able to be as informed as possible before you make these huge decisions on who is watching your children,” said Bryce’s mom, Tina Williams.

Bryce’s parents have lobbied the state to make inspection records and complaints easier to find and to strengthen regulations.

Those changes could help save more kids like Bryce, they said.

“If there is something in a day care provider’s background that could reasonably make a parent say, ‘I’m not leaving my child alone with this person,’ then the law should require, at minimum, that the parent have this information without having to go dig for it,” said Blake Shuart, an attorney at Hutton and Hutton, who represented Bryce’s family and several other families of children who have died or been injured in day cares.

“Our Legislature and executive branch will stop at nothing to protect the futures of unborn children, but it’s about time they place equal priority on the futures of those who have already left the womb,” Shuart said.

In May, the state began to post the results of complaint-based inspections on its website, which were not previously available, said Lori Steelman, child care licensing program director for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

Parents who are able to find the search form on the website can see one-sentence descriptions of the findings. Details of the complaint and the investigation aren’t available. The reports go back only three years.

Steelman said parents can submit open records requests for the findings of any inspection, and the department will attempt to send them the information electronically at no charge.

‘Underlying thorn’

After Bryce’s death in 2011, the state restricted Patterson’s license so she could not care for children younger than 18 months.

“At the time, when we would get online, (Bryce’s) death was listed as an ‘incident’ that ‘needed corrected.’ That doesn’t give a parent looking into a day care real information,” said Bryce’s mom, Tina Williams.

Then the family found out that Patterson had been granted an exception allowing her to care for an infant.

To settle a lawsuit filed by the family, Patterson later admitted to negligence in Bryce’s death and agreed to never operate a day care again.

Patterson had no insurance for her day care. Ultimately she paid $2,000 to put a bench at Bryce’s grave.

Nearly five years after his death, losing Bryce is still “an underlying thorn that never goes away,” said Brock Mosier.

After Bryce died, Mosier and Williams had a daughter, Sophia. They later divorced.

“It’s a daily struggle,” Williams said. “His birthday and anniversary of his death are always really difficult. I didn’t have him for Christmas, so I don’t have a memory of that. But he was alive during Easter, and Mother’s Day and Fourth of July, and those are the holidays that are the hardest.”

Most people don’t know how to talk to someone who has lost a child, Williams said.

“They’re afraid to ask questions,” she said. “And I love to talk about him. I make sure that there’s pictures of him all over my house, and Sophia, his sister, knows who he is and she talks about him.

“Any time she has a balloon and she lets it go outside, she says, ‘Well, I guess Bryce needed it more.’ ”