Health and safety in day care: parental knowledge

Because injuries and illnesses occur among children, even in licensed child care facilities, parents need to be aware of existing hazards. We developed a questionnaire to assess parental knowledge of 16 health and safety features in their child's care facility. These health and safety features were identified by parents, in a pilot study, as being the most important features in a child care facility. This questionnaire was completed by 91 parents who use day care. Parents were well-educated employees of a health care institution. Our results indicate that even well-educated parents often do not check child care facilities for health and safety features. Parents tolerated a mean of 9.3% of 16 unsafe features and did not know the status of 22.4% of the features. Fifteen percent of the children has been removed from their child care facility because of health and safety concerns, 7.7% reported an injury. Our results suggest that it is important that physicians, during well child visits, include discussions about health and safety issues in the day care environment.