After the death of a baby girl at an unregulated Madison home day care provider, child-care experts say there 's a shortage of competent care for the very young.
And they 're urging parents to consider the benefits of using often costlier regulated day care providers because the quality of unregulated care can vary widely.
"The bulk of really serious injuries and deaths happen in unregulated caregivers, " said George Hagenauer, acting executive director of Madison-based Community Coordinated Child Care, or 4-C, which certifies day care providers and provides parents with day care referrals.
Four-month-old Ahnika Alesch was found unresponsive on Aug. 29 at a Far East Side family day care center; results of an autopsy are not expected back for a couple of months, Dane County Coroner John Stanley said.
Police have recommended the girl 's caregiver be charged with negligence in the death, but as of Friday, the Dane County District Attorney 's office hadn 't decided whether to prosecute.
Officials have not released the name of Ahnika 's caregiver, but the address on a 911 call report from Aug. 29 about an unresponsive infant matches that on a so-called "stop-operating " letter sent to Kristy Kaltenberg by the state Department of Health and Family Services on Sept. 4.
The letter refers to a police visit to her home on Aug. 29 and essentially lets Kaltenberg know that she is out of compliance with a state law that requires in-home day care providers to have a license if they care for four to eight children not related to the provider. Caring for three or fewer unrelated children does not require a license.
At the time of Ahnika 's death, Kaltenberg was caring for seven children under the age of 7, according to the letter.
On Tuesday, Kaltenberg declined to comment for this story.
Kaltenberg had not applied for a state license before, according to the Stephanie Marquis, a spokeswoman with DHFS.
However, she had been certified in recent years by Dane County through 4-C, Hagenauer said, but had let that certification lapse. As such, she was among the ranks of the unregulated, in-home day care centers across the state -- some good, some not so good and some, such as the one Kaltenberg was ordered to stop operating, that are illegal.
Marquis wasn 't sure Friday whether her agency had already visited Kaltenberg 's home to make sure she had stopped operating illegally, but she said such verification visits are required.
Working parents
Seventy-one percent of Wisconsin parents of children under the age of 6 were in the workforce in 2006, according to the ongoing Kids Count study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Along with Nebraska, Wisconsin has the fourth-highest percentage among the states.
Of the approximately 350,000 children under the age of 5 in Wisconsin, recent estimates show that about 220,000 of them are in regulated child-care settings, said Dave Edie, an early education policy analyst with the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families.
Because of their age, the infants and toddlers in that group are the most vulnerable day care population. But they are also the least well-served, both in southern Wisconsin and the state as a whole, Hagenauer and Edie said.
"Because of stricter staff-child ratios, which are appropriate for younger children, infant and toddler care is more expensive, less affordable for parents and less plentiful in the marketplace, " Edie said.
What "less plentiful " means, however, is difficult to determine.
"There isn 't real data on how many kids need child care, " Edie said.
Still, in Dane County at least, Hagenauer tries to ballpark it.
Based on the number of births each year in Dane County -- about 5,000 -- and the percentage of parents who return to work within a child 's first six to nine months of life, there are only about half as many places available at regulated centers to serve children ages birth to 2, Hagenauer said.
The rest presumably make due with care from relatives or friends or an unregulated day care setting.