Protect Children From Abuse and Death in Child Care Facilities

Every week 8.2 million kids spend part of their time being cared for outside of the home by people who are not their parents. And for that large group of kids, we barely know anything about the quality of their care.

Back in 2014, Congress authorized a block grant to states that subsidizes the cost of child care for families with low-incomes. States taking those federal funds were mandated to implement a variety of safety standards, including conducting thorough background checks on child care workers and reporting on troubling incidents.

Of all the states that use these grant funds, over a dozen have failed to comply with the mandate to report death and abuse statistics. And on the issue of comprehensive background checks: more than half are out of compliance with the policy.

This leaves millions of parents in the dark about their child’s safety in daycare centers.

In states that do share safety statistics, cases of abuse or serious injury at daycare centers are as low as zero and as high as nineteen thousand. But because the data is so scattered—with some states not reporting at all—parents can’t know the truth about the safety of their children.

Child care centers in the U.S. are safe, but even just one child experiencing abuse or dying in daycare is too many. Add your name to protect kids from abuse and death and demand the government enforce child care safety regulations.