The death of a child who stopped breathing in a Bloomington day care last month, and the subsequent revelation that the center was caring for eight more children than its license permitted, raised a question for me.

How can parents run a background check on their child care provider?

The state Department of Human Services (DHS), which licenses child care providers in Minnesota, has an online listing of facilities. These include the 1,564 child care centers overseen by the state and another 12,000 family child care providers overseen by the county governments. The searchable listings contain the name, address, phone number and the type of service offered.

Most of the listings are marked “active,” meaning they hold valid operating licenses. But others, typically marked in brown because they’re not operating, leap out immediately: “Temp Immediate Suspension Under Appeal,” “Revoked: Under Appeal” or simply, “Denied.”

There’s nowhere to click to find out why the center is in trouble. Still, those records — whether a correction order, an investigation summary or “negative” action against a license — are public, said Jerry Kerber, DHS’s licensing division director. The agency plans to put them online within months, he said.

For now, people can call the agency at (651) 296-3971, and a child care licensing inspector will answer questions about providers and any problems they might have, Kerber said.

“We’ll have somebody on the phone with them who will look up the information,” he said. “Because this is public data, people have a right to get a copy of it too.”

The state sends out about 60 correction orders each month. The child care providers who get them are required to post the orders in a prominent location. That way, parents who are putting children in their care can know exactly why their provider needs to shape up.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 6:42 pm and is filed under Public records. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.