Two-year-old girl wanders away from St. John’s child care centre
A St. John’s family wants a review of daycare regulations after a two-year-old girl who wandered away from a St. John’s child care centre was returned unharmed.
“Certainly accidents happen, but you can’t lose a baby,” Danielle Douglas, the toddler’s aunt, said Monday. “We’re talking about a child that doesn’t have language skills, who can’t communicate.
“It was the middle of winter. She could have succumbed to exposure if she wasn’t discovered immediately.”
Douglas said her niece slipped through a broken gate Thursday during outdoor playtime and walked away from the Discovery Days Children’s Centre.
Douglas said the little girl was dressed in outdoor clothes and sitting on the steps of a home close by when a man walking his dog noticed her and knocked on the door.
The woman who answered the door called the police, and the girl was brought back to the centre about 15 minutes after she had wandered off, Douglas said in an interview.
No one at the centre could be reached for comment.
“They should have been aware that a child could push through this gate and get out,” Douglas said. “They should have known immediately that they were short a child and they should have been the ones to call police.”
Douglas was not sure how many children were out playing at the time. The centre is described online as having a total capacity of 26, with an age range of 18 months to 12 years.
It was her niece’s second day at the centre, Douglas said.
It’s the second major recent incident, after a child was forgotten and left locked inside another St. John’s daycare last December, she added.
“Do we have regulations that are strong enough? What can we do to make sure this doesn’t happen again?
“If we keep going the way we’re going something else is going to happen and we’re just asking for a fatality to occur,” Douglas said. “I would like to see some action from our policy-makers.”
The provincial education and early childhood development department says the centre is co-operating and violations will be issued. It says no charges are being laid, but it wasn’t clear what, if any, staff discipline or other penalties may follow.
“All child care centres and family care homes are held to the highest standard to ensure safety of children and quality of programming,” the department said in a statement. “We continue to work with child care providers to develop stronger safety practices.”
A provincial government registry indicates violation orders were issued against the same centre in August 2016 for inaccurate homeroom registers, including children who were on a field trip but not signed out. Another in July 2016 says a staff member did not have a valid child protection records check on file.