Day Care In New York And How It Is Improving Essay, Research Paper

Currently there are only about twelve or so day-care investigators

on Long Island, whose responsibilities are to inspect and monitor all 1,659

providers caring for 35,319 preschool children in Nassau and Suffolk

Counties. This number of investigators is insufficient, and has hindered the

ability of these two counties to properly inspect the quality of day care in

their areas.

These inspectors are called licensors or licensing representatives,

who are civil servants and make a maximum of $44,739 this year. For an

individual to be able to become an inspector of child care in the state of

New York, the requirements are at least six years of experience as an

inspector of day-care or other children’s programs or as a designer or

reviewer of various social services programs, as well as some background

in case management.

The requirements in New York appear to be much stiffer than those

in many other states. For example, California requires simply a college

degree or six months experience with the state.

Top officials have stated that all over the state of New York

investigators have been struggling with their work as a result of the recent

surge in day-care providers. The state has said that licensors will arquire

help in the very near future. The help will arrive in two forms:

reinforcements and computers.

In New York State this year, the number of cases per licensor is at

its lowest since five years ago. It has dropped from 165 to 156 cases per

licensor. During the next year, the state of New York will commission

eleven or so workers at the Suffolk Department of Social Services and the

Child Care Council of Suffolk to, working under contract with the state,

inspect day-care providers in the county. This is in an attemp to lighten

the work loads of the licensors in Suffolk county. “It swells our ranks in

terms of people who are out there actually doing inspections and are able

to recommend an enforcement act,” said Suzanne Zafonte Sennett,

director of the state Bureau of Early Childhood Services. Nassau county

has not yet voulenteered to participate because of doubts about the

magnatudes of its potential positive effects.

This year, for the first time ever, the state began giving formal

training to licensing representatives. Experts from the State University of

New York have developed two new training tools for the investigators.

This past summer, the Long Island representatives went for their first ever

formal training in day-care regulation, and have also in the past year

obtained copies of a two volume manual of the state regulations, policy

statements, state social services law and other guidelines to help

investigators do their jobs more efficiently.

Suzanne Zafonte Sennett also said that by next February

investigators will have the aid of a new laptop-based computer network

called the Child Care Facility System. This system will allow investigators

to track each provider’s complete history that can be updated as necessary

at a quite rapid rate and used by everyone working in the field of day-care

regulation. The system will do away with the current abundance of stacks

of paper and manila folders that are the core of the state’s system now, and

will allow investigators to do their jobs quicker and with more efficiency.

She said the plan is “basically, get rid of the paper and put the entire licensing inspection process and the monitoring process online through a

better automated support.”

The intense desire to improve the regulation of day-care recently

has shown greatly. The percentage of child care complaints that were

substantiated in the past five years is at its lowest, with drastic drops from

35% on Long Island to 19%, and 35% in New York State to 23%. If the

current interest in improving the regulation of child care in the state of

New York continues, the inspectors jobs will become less stressful, and

child care will improve substantially and with great impact.