Is a Daycare Center Safe? How to Find Public Complaints and Safety Violations.

Why Is It Important to Look into Complaints Made About a Daycare Center?

As we mentioned above, THHS is dedicated to helping families find safe daycare centers for their children with its online database of centers across the state. We cannot stress enough how important it is that Texas families take advantage of this free resource before enrolling their child at a local daycare center. 

Uncovering complaints made about daycare centers in your area can help you proactively identify any safety issues or deficiencies before choosing a daycare center. These complaints can also reveal if the center has a pattern of negligence. For example, several reported child injuries at the center or multiple citations over a period of time for the same issues at a facility can flag serious safety concerns.

In addition, these online complaints can help your family if your child suffers an injury at a daycare center. Knowing if that injury or what caused your child’s injury is a common occurrence at the center can help you decide what to do following the incident. If there are repeated citations for the same issues over time, like untrained caregivers, lack of supervision, or repeated injuries, your family may have a bigger legal case to hold the center accountable for its safety failures.

How Can I Research Daycare Centers?

We recommend downloading our free guide as a starting point to help you find a safe daycare center for your little one. Once you have narrowed down your options to a few daycare centers, looking online at the THHS database can help you dig into any activities and deficiencies that may have occurred at the center. An activity refers to any inspection or self-reported incident that has happened at a daycare center, and a deficiency is any reported failure or unsuccessful attempt to abide by a law that led to the state inspection of the daycare center.

When you are researching a daycare center, follow these steps:

1. Go to the “Search Texas Child Care” main webpage.
2. Search for the daycare center you’re considering for your little one.
3. After reaching the daycare center page, you can choose “operation details,” which identifies an overview of the center’s qualifications, including licensing, Texas Rising Star accreditation, and programs provided.
4. Scroll down and select “View Full Compliance History.” Here, you can see their activity and deficiencies.
5. Look through Activities. This will show you how often the daycare center has been investigated and how often they have reported incidents themselves.
6. Look through Deficiencies. This will show you a complete results list of each investigation, including the date, the reason for the report, and the investigation results. Key deficiencies that indicate a daycare center is insufficient include a violation of maintaining records, preventing abuse, and preventing negligence. These violations can indicate a lack of supervision of staff by management and a disorganized or negligent staff. While you should consider every violation, our team often sees these minimum standards violations in serious daycare center injury cases.

Was Your Child Physically or Emotionally Injured at Their Daycare Center in Texas? Contact The Button Law Firm.

If your child was physically or emotionally harmed because caregivers did not comply with Texas daycare safety laws, contact our experienced daycare and child injury lawyers at The Button Law Firm. With lawyers in Dallas, Houston, and Midland, we are ready to listen, fight for your family, and help your family move forward. Our lawyers at The Button Law Firm are recognized on the prestigious Texas Super Lawyers list, and we can help guide you after a traumatizing incident involving your child. We work on contingency, meaning we don’t charge you or collect any upfront fees to get started on your case. Call us at 214-699-4409, email us at [email protected], or fill out a contact form for a free case evaluation.