State faults day care firm’s vans
Reports list vehicle-alarm problems at locations in five cities
Lifesaving alarm systems meant to ensure that children aren’t left in sweltering day care vans have been found inoperable, disabled or otherwise flawed at Ascent Children’s Health Services locations throughout Arkansas, according to state reports.
The Division of Child Care and Early Childhood Education — a component of the Arkansas Department of Human Services — wrote the reports. The department provided, at this newspaper’s request, the reports from 2015 through early August.
The reports document past problems with van alarms at the business’s locations in Trumann, Batesville, Mountain Home, Arkadelphia and West Memphis.
For example, in February, an investigator found that the “alarms on all vans were disabled” at the company’s facility in Mountain Home.
“I’m rather amazed by all of the issues that have been reported at these facilities,” said Jim Gilbert, a safety adviser for Arkansas State University Childhood Services, after reviewing documents provided by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette . “Rarely do I run into a situation where the alarm doesn’t work or is malfunctioning in some way.”
ASU Childhood Services provides assistance to childcare providers. In multiple findings by the Department of Human Services, Ascent has been told to use the ASU Childhood Services.
Despite at least one documented past problem, the alarm system was working at the West Memphis day care when 5-year-old Christopher Gardner died in a van in June, according to a Department of Human Services spokesman and West Memphis police Capt. Joe Baker.
At issue is how the alarm was used, Baker said.
The van alarms are simple devices that cost a few hundred dollars to buy and install, Gilbert said. Generally speaking, when a day care van is switched off, an alarm soon begins to sound. The only way to turn it off is by pushing a button at the back of the vehicle.
The alarms have been required since 2005 by state law. Their function is to force drivers to walk to the back of vans, checking the seats as they go. It’s something mandated under state rules and regulations.
The “course of practice [in West Memphis] was the driver would exit the van, go around, open the rear van door and press the button,” Baker said. “You don’t get the effect of what they’re trying to get you to do in their protocols by doing that. You don’t go seat to seat, making sure the children are awake and ready to get off the van by getting out, going around, and opening it from the outside. So, the system was operating correctly, and the button was pressed to deactivate it as it’s supposed to work. Where they had an issue, they did not follow their protocols.”
Rep. Dan Sullivan, R-Jonesboro, is chief executive of Ascent Children’s Health Services. He told employees earlier this month that he plans to retire at the end of the year .
Reached by phone, Sullivan declined to comment for this article. No one with the company returned multiple requests for comment left by phone at the Jonesboro headquarters.
Sullivan had previously issued a statement in the West Memphis case, saying that employees “did not follow company policies and procedures, and if they had, this tragedy would not have occurred.”
Ascent operates 10 facilities across Arkansas. Its website also says the company “is a leading provider of community-based programs providing early developmental intervention day treatment services and mental health services to infants, children, adolescents and families in Arkansas.”
How Ascent’s facilities compare with others couldn’t be determined. A spokesman for the Department of Human Services said the agency does not track day care facility problems by regulation and could not provide a list of other violators around the state.
STATE RECORDS
State records indicate that at least half of the 10 Ascent facilities have been out of compliance with the state van-alarm regulation in the past several years.
In July 2015, a Department of Human Services licensing specialist in Trumann noted “the child safety alarm on van 4 does not work properly.” Officials at the site told the inspector that they removed the van from service, and children would not be allowed on it until it was fixed.
During a follow-up visit in December, the licensing specialist said “no problems viewed” with the vans in use.
In October, a licensing specialist in Batesville noted that she had inspected the three vans on-site there and each had a problem.
“Van 17 can not be used until the alarm is repaired, it is currently disabled. Vans 51 and 17 have the deactivation button mounted incorrectly, it can be pushed by standing outside the van in the back. Buttons should be properly installed in front of the back seat and per manufacturer’s instructions.”
In November, a state licensing specialist in West Memphis noted the “Alarm on van #77 is out of service. Director stated that van is not in use and a ticket for service has been placed. Children shall not be placed on van until alarm has been repaired.”
Then in February, a licensing specialist found that the “alarms on all vans were disabled” at the Mountain Home facility. The Human Services Department said the “facility will have an [additional] staff member to walk through the vans and verify all [children] have exited the van in addition to the driver and the director or their designee.”
In June, Christopher died on a transport van at the West Memphis facility. Police said employees left the 5-year-old in the van for eight hours while temperatures inside climbed to 141 degrees.
A Human Services Department complaint report from that day notes that to “[ensure] that no children are left on the vehicle, the driver or a staff member must walk through the vehicle and physically inspect each seat before leaving the vehicle.”
The report does not mention the van’s alarm, but it “was found to be in working order upon inspection
at the impound lot,” said Brandi Hinkle, a spokesman for the Department of Human Services.
Days later, Ascent vans were inspected at facilities in Mountain Home and Arkadelphia by the Department of Human Services.
In Mountain Home, “Bus number 47 alarm will not work,” according to a June 15 Department of Human Services report. “The bus has been used as an extra when one of the regular [buses] are out of service. Bus #47 can not be used to transport children until the alarm is fixed.”
The next day in Arkadelphia, the van alarms “can be disarmed with the ignition switch,” a state licensing specialist wrote. The problem was present on vans 3, 33 and
74. “Have all vans corrected.”
“To see all of those infractions in any organization, that’s a red flag that somebody needs to be on top of and fixing these problems,” Gilbert said in an interview.
The West Memphis facility where Christopher died is under a one-year probation, as is the North Little Rock facility where a child was left unattended outside in late July.
Hinkle has said probationary status generally applies to specific sites and not a corporation as a whole.
“Although, if we were to see that there was systemic issues, we would consider that, but they are put on probationary status per-site, not per-provider,” Hinkle said.
REGULATIONS HISTORY
Christopher was the first hot-vehicle death at a day care facility in the 12 years since the alarm systems have been mandated in Arkansas.
The requirement was contained in Act 1979 of 2005, sponsored by then-Sen. Shane Broadway, D-Bryant. At the time, Broadway — a former House speaker — had other child safety issues on his mind. He was concerned about growth in the state’s pre-kindergarten program and the fact that a public school student had been hit and killed by a car passing a stopped school bus in his district.
“You were going to have more kids — as a result of the growth of the state’s Pre-K program — you were going to have more kids
transported to and from day cares, so there needed to be more safety for them,” Broadway said in an interview for this article.
He said Ann Gilbert, the head of the Arkansas Transit Association, suggested that day care vans use a new technology, a buzzer system, to force drivers to walk to the back of the vans and check for children.
(Jim Gilbert, the safety adviser for ASU Childhood Services, and Ann Gilbert are married.)
“I will tell you, when this bill passed in the 2005 legislative session, it was written to go into effect July 1 of that year, and I think it was signed in April and May,” Ann Gilbert said in an interview. “Before the bill went into effect, but after it was signed into law,
there was in fact a death in a day care van.”
On June 6, 2005, 3-yearold Marcellus Johnson was left in a van owned by the Child Care Center of Arkansas in Little Rock.
“He would be so ready to get on that school bus and go to school,” Randi Williams, his mother, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette after his death. “Yesterday he was so happy to go to school. That’s the last time I saw my son.”
The center — owned and operated at the time by former state Sen. Bill Lewellen, D-Marianna — was closed as a result. The driver, Rancocas Foreman of Little Rock, was arrested and charged with manslaughter in the child’s death. He went on to be fined $1,000 and received no jail time.