The classroom was noted as being "very dirty," along with the bathroom and hallway floors. Inspectors found a staff member who yelled and cursed at children. And some children were wearing soaked, saturated diapers.
That's what state licensing inspectors found at the Jane Addams Day Care Center in Toms River when they investigated various complaints in 2003 and 2004. During those years, the state found 43 violations at the North Bay Avenue center. In 2004, the center changed management and conditions improved, according to its owners and state records.
Yet if concerned parents hadn't complained, the state may never have known or corrected the violations at the Jane Addams center. That's because New Jersey's oversight of child-care facilities is one of the weakest in the nation.
For a licensed day care center with six or more children — like the Jane Addams — the state requires an inspection only once every three years. Nearly all states inspect at least annually, looking for health hazards such as improper fencing and lack of cleanliness.
Moreover, New Jersey has just 27 inspectors for 4,290 licensed day care centers.
And that's just the regulated side of day care.
There are two types of child care in New Jersey: Family care and licensed day care.
In family care, homeowners can watch five or fewer children, in addition to their own, without a license.
New Jersey, along with Louisiana and Idaho, requires no licensing of family care businesses. Consequently, no one knows exactly how many there are in this state.
The rules are so lax that almost anyone, even convicted criminals, can legally set up a small, family child-care business in their home.
Even for the 3,200 family-care homes that have voluntarily registered with the state, oversight is based on an honor system: No criminal background checks are done. Applicants simply have to state that they, and anyone 14 years or older in the home, have never been convicted of a crime.
The only mandatory check: Applicants who voluntarily register are screened through the state's confidential child-abuse registry, which is not as broad as a full criminal records search.
For the second type of day care — commercial day care, which typically involves at least six children and often more — a state license and inspection are required.
This all adds up to one fact: You, and state regulators, can't be sure if your children are always safe in day care.
It can take days and even weeks for the state child-care licensing office to visit a child-care center following a complaint, according to data from the state Department of Children and Families reviewed by the Asbury Park Press.
From 2006 through 2007, officials took an average of 7.4 days to investigate life and safety complaints, those that fell short of actual child-abuse allegations, the data show. Complaints dealing with day care program issues had an average response time of 10.4 days.
Since the beginning of 2006, the longest wait between a complaint and an investigation was 83 days, according to the data.
A state spokeswoman said that in some cases officials will not respond until local health departments or other agencies investigate first. But the spokeswoman, Kate Bernyk, could not say how often that happens.
"If there is a significant health and safety issue, we may be asked by other entities to not investigate until after they have completed their investigations," Bernyk said.
Bernyk could not say, however, why it would take days to weeks to investigate complaints about a center's program offerings, such as teaching children how to interact with each other.
The state did not release data concerning child-abuse investigations, citing confidentiality laws.
In 2006 and 2007, the data showed that 514 day care centers had 1,404 non-abuse complaints lodged against them, and investigators ultimately found a total of 1,569 violations during their inspections.
However, a spot check against paper records show the database is incomplete, and the state doesn't publish day care inspection information for the public.
But today, the Press has made detailed information about licensed child-care center inspection and non-abuse complaints available online. Child-care centers can be searched at www.DataUniverse.com — the Press's public records Web site — under "What's New."
Since 1996, 1,176 of currently operating day care centers have had at least one non-abuse violation, according to the data. But 61 day care centers have 33 or more non-abuse violations, and account for 26 percent of the incidents.
"The state can legally, and should morally, do something about this," said national child-care advocate Linda K. Smith, when told of the Press' findings. "There is just no excuse for what you are describing. Who are we protecting here? If there is going to be an error made, the error needs to be made in favor of the safety of the child. These children cannot speak for themselves."
Parents in the dark
Injuries and deaths at the hands of child-care providers are rare, a review of recent lawsuits in the state show. But parents are kept in the dark by the state even when there are substantiated cases of child abuse at a center.
In 2007, there were nine substantiated abuse cases in day care centers, with none in Ocean County and one in Monmouth County, according to the state. A total of 514 abuse complaints were filed that year.
The state won't say where such abuse occurred. State law makes virtually all abuse records secret.
"This is very concerning," said Smith, the executive director of the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies (NACCRRA). "If they don't have access to complaints, abuse records and inspection deficiencies, how are they supposed to decide what is best for their child?"
But even learning the names of the centers involved in a non-abuse complaint is a difficult task for any parent seeking child care. No list is available.
The state's sole comment on the Press' findings was a prepared statement from Children and Families spokeswoman Kate Bernyk: "New Jersey is meeting our statutory and regulatory requirements as they are currently outlined."
Gary Sefchik, chief of licensing for the department, has been unavailable for an interview since May 6.
The state ranks 47th lowest in the nation for regulatory oversight of day care, according to the NACCRRA. New Jersey ranks low, in part, for: failing to put inspection and complaint reports online; for having 159 child-care centers per inspector; and for not requiring inspections more than once every three years.
While other states have rating systems that can guide parents toward better care, New Jersey has twice rejected funding such a project, citing the cost.
New Jersey also makes it difficult for parents to review a day care center's inspection file. A parent must go to Trenton to look at the paper files. There are no plans to make the information available on the Internet, as many other states have done.
Instead, when choosing day care, parents often rely on recommendations from friends and co-workers.
Manalapan resident Diane Schraub used what connections she had to find a good place to put her daughter — then 4 1/2 months old — into day care. Schraub said she had no way of knowing that licensing reports were available.
"When I entered into the world of day care, I had no idea what was good and what wasn't," Schraub said. "I just looked around my town and talked to other parents and teachers, but I had no specific benchmark to use — and that would have been extremely helpful."
What the records show
Child-care centers in New Jersey are licensed to handle some 346,000 children — almost seven times the number of licensed nursing home beds — and one report pegged 2005 industry receipts at $2.6 billion, with more than $1 billion of that from state and federal sources.
A review of court records and licensing information shows limited child-abuse issues, but children have been exposed to dangers. Examples include:
In 2006, a center in Gloucester County was shuttered after inspectors discovered it was situated on the site of a former industrial plant contaminated with mercury. That same year, Ultimate Scholar Day Care Center, Toms River, was forced to close after chemicals related to dry cleaning were found on an outdoor play area. The Toms River center's owner rented space for the center and said she was unaware of the problem until she received a notice from the landlord saying she would have to vacate the property.
Last August, an 11-month-old boy in Woodbridge died after a 9-year-old fatally attacked him at a registered family care provider's home, kicking him in the head. The death came about when the caregiver left the children alone for a few minutes to throw out soiled diapers and answer a telephone, she told a state Superior Court judge.
The woman, 65-year-old Beverly Bryant, was also looking after a 3-year-old and two 2-year-old children at the time. She pleaded guilty to two counts of child endangerment and was sentenced to five years' probation. She was ordered to never again care for children in a business setting.
New Jersey does rank eighth in the nation for its relatively strong child-care program requirements, according to the NACCRRA survey.
The survey found New Jersey and the Department of Defense — which operates day care centers for military and civilian employees — are the only licensing agencies to require center directors to have a college degree. It is also one of eight agencies to require basic health standards, and one of 13 to require centers to have activities in six child developmental areas.
New Jersey also bars anyone who has abused a child from ever working in a licensed day care setting or a registered family home site.
In written testimony delivered to the Department of Children and Families during a budget hearing, Nancy Thompson, president of the New Jersey Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, urged the department to mandate criminal background checks and fingerprinting for family child-care providers.
"We believe that parents are making the assumption that this has been checked," Thompson said in an interview. "Most parents would be shocked and outraged if they realized it was not a requirement. We would like to see fingerprinting not just for people who are voluntarily registered, but for anyone who is taking care of children as a business."
The state says it receives 70 to 80 complaints a month about day care providers.
Complaints tend to concern inadequate staffing and supervision; inadequate response to children's needs, such as diapering, feeding and nurturing; and inappropriate discipline, according to the NACCRRA survey.
A goal of Web access
The state first publicly discussed creating a day care licensing Web site in 2005, but until last August, the state used a largely paper-based system. Bernyk, spokeswoman for the Children and Families department, said public online access to child-care records and violations "is still a goal."
Many other states make information about child-care much easier to find. At least 15 make some level of inspection or complaint reports available online.
The reports can be eye opening.
For example, at a North Carolina child-care center, a staff member bit a 1-year-old in response to that child biting another child. Another child had his ear pinched for not looking at a staff member when spoken to, according to that state's licensing Web site.
New Jersey has twice declined to fund a program that would create a ratings guide for licensed child-care centers. A nonprofit consortium, with state input, is now running a pilot program in six Camden and Trenton centers.
Day care centers can voluntarily meet the standards of day care accreditation organizations, but few do. Fewer than 6 percent of day care centers in the state have met the criteria of the National Association for the Education of Young Children, one of the best-known organizations in the nation.
Meeting such accreditation requirements can be a lengthy and costly process for centers, since it usually involves providing increased training for employees.
With no clearing-house that parents can access when seeking child-care options, most still rely on word of mouth, as Eatontown mother Lynn Spence did when searching for a placement for her two children.
Spence said she heard about Monmouth Day Care Center in Red Bank from a co-worker at the Manalapan engineering firm where she works.