Day Care Safety Then and Now

The most important article The State  ran during my visit to Columbia attempted to assess whether children in day care are safer today than they were when Gail Cutro was first arrested. It was written by reporter Clif LeBlanc, who covered the Cutro case back then (several of his articles were mentioned in my book) and is still at the paper churning out stories. His answer to the question was a qualified yes.

Communication between social services caseworkers and state day care regulators is much improved, LeBlanc found. And laws have been changed, so that caseworkers are now permitted to drop into home day cares unannounced. The state also requires home day care providers to be fingerprinted for criminal background checks.

But more needs to be done, experts said. South Carolina does not yet require FBI fingerprint checks, which means that providers who were in trouble with the law in other states can move there and take a job in day care without tripping alarms. And the experts LeBlanc interviewed also said that there are still too many hurdles prosecutors must surmount to take these cases to court.

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