What Safety Policies Does Your Child’s Daycare Have?
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{related: 4 apps that help working moms stay connected to school or daycare}
This observation is specifically about summer camp, but it can apply to daycare as well: I’ve been surprised at the differing policies for drop-off and pickup at various programs my son has attended. At a couple of them, staff have never asked me for my ID, while others require it (until the staff start recognizing you). When I mentioned this to Kat, she said she believes this is the first year she’s been asked for ID. The probability of a stranger coming to a summer camp to abduct a random child is low, but the more common situation of family abduction is a possibility that camps should take seriously.
In addition to requiring an ID to pick up a child, here are a few safety measures that many daycare facilities take:
- Calling parents, whether personally or using an automated system, when a child has not been dropped off by a certain time of day (to prevent children from accidentally being left in hot cars, and so on)
- Monitoring the facility with security cameras
- Keeping external doors locked at all times
- Enabling parents to watch their children via webcam (perhaps more for peace of mind than safety)
What safety policies does your child’s daycare have? Are you satisfied with them? How much do you worry about your child’s safety in childcare?
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My nursery has locked external doors but are pretty free and easy. Yesterday, I dropped my son off and he went with his teacher to build a fire in the garden to make porridge. He’s 2.
No cameras or reporting – I’m always amazed by people who know what their kid ate that day.
I don’t consider a webcam a security plus – I don’t want 20+ other sets of parents watching my kid, plus anything electronic is open to hacking. I’m actually very glad my kids daycare doesn’t have one.
-Bathroom doors are always open (until potty trained and don’t need help), and changing tables are out in the open too. staff has a separate bathroom
-If kids aren’t there by 9am they send a message through the app .
-Outside doors always locked and need a specific center-issued badge to get in the door.
-Parents sign in/sign out kids in their classroom every day, just initial with time of dropoff/pickup.
-Teachers are supposed to reach out if kiddos haven’t arrived by a certain time but implementation is hit or miss.
-Changing areas are out in the open.
I’m pretty happy with this arrangement. I would be worried about pickup time if kiddos were using a carpool line. Dropoff is not so worrisome to me–it seems unlikely a non-approved person would drop off a kid at school/daycare and if they do it’s probably a good thing. But I would want to make sure IDs are checked at pickup unless the staff recognizes the approved person doing the pickup.
The workers at my childcare know my kids, and know the people who are allowed to pick them up. I feel like that’s the best security I could ask for in terms of unauthorized pickups. If I have a new person coming to get them, I give them a heads up, and they ask for ID. There’s also a hard policy about no worker ever being alone with a kid out of eyesight or hearing for any reason.
My family owns a home daycare in Minnesota so some of the DHS rules are different from other states and centers, but we have up to date car seats and boosters for all of the children, we have to take the transportation safety class every couple of years as well. For pick up and drop off there is an approved list of people to pick up and drop off the kids that the parents write when they enroll, and we make sure to have all of the workers meet the people picking up and dropping off that way we will recognize them when/if it happens. We don’t have any security cameras, but I do wish that we had a two people working at all times policy. Thankfully we’ve never had any incidents where the person watching the kids has had something happen to them, but I do worry about it; we just can’t afford to have two employees there all of the time. When I used to work in a church nursery security was more of in issue since we’d have different children, and family members every time, and we didn’t have the budget for a fancy security system. So I made these paper check in and check out cards, that way I knew whoever had the card had to get it from the parent.
I like your idea to ask for ID when someone comes to pick their child up from daycare. Both my wife and I are going back to work after having our first child and we need to find a daycare center to take him to. I’ll be sure to ask the prospective daycares what sort of safety procedures they have in place.