Our experienced daycare and child injury lawyers at The Button Law Firm are raising awareness about the importance of safety in daycare centers across the Lone Star State and what can happen to innocent little ones when centers do not prioritize child safety.
If you are a parent in Texas, you may be surprised to learn that daycare centers cut safety corners more often than you think. In 2023 alone, there were 651 confirmed cases of serious injuries and one fatality for children ages four and younger at licensed daycare centers, per an annual report issued by Texas Health and Human Services (DHHS). Surprisingly, this statistic does not include injuries that went unreported or those that occurred at centers that are unlicensed and most likely not abiding by Texas daycare laws, also known as minimum standards. Despite your best efforts to find a safe, licensed daycare for your little one, the caregivers responsible for their well-being may still fall short in ensuring their safety.
What Are Common Daycare Safety Violations That Put Children at Risk?
Our experienced legal team has seen firsthand how some daycare centers fail to comply with the comprehensive state childcare laws that are meant to keep children out of harm's way. Through our work helping families across the Lone Star State overcome a daycare injury, we have found the following to be the top three leading causes of child injuries at local centers: hiring unqualified caregivers, a lack of caregiver supervision, and incomplete training by caregivers. We will explain how little ones can seriously suffer because of these failures.
When you find a childcare center for your little one, you expect management to be dedicated to hiring caregivers who will keep your child safe. However, there are a surprising number of facilities that fail to complete background checks which have specific rules to prevent dangerous people from being in contact with your child—before putting unqualified caregivers in charge of a classroom of children. Some of the caregivers may have insufficient experience around kids, which may seem like a simple enough job but can have devastating consequences if a person lacks that experience. Caregivers who have no experience taking care of little ones lack the practical skills to know what to do when unique situations that arise at a daycare center. If you want to learn more about specific caregiver qualifications that are required in Texas and are important to your child’s safety, watch this video.
- Daycare Directors Not Supervising Their Staff
When it comes to daycare directors, their duties include more than just registration and management of the facility. One essential responsibility of a daycare director is to oversee classrooms to ensure all caregivers at the facility follow childcare laws at all times. Directors should look for signs of child abuse, any gaps in proper supervision of children, and any hazards in the classroom and around the center that could injure a child. Surveillance cameras in daycare classrooms can give parents peace of mind, but directors should also frequently watch live or recorded footage to ensure caregivers comply with the minimum standards and immediately address any issues they observe.
- Lack of Staff Training
According to ChildCareEd, a training program for child caregivers, Texas caregivers must complete 24 hours of training to be handed responsibility of a classroom, and they need to complete 24 hours of training each year after that. These trainings include topics like mandatory incident reporting, child safe sleep practices, first aid, and child development education. Despite these trainings being required by DHHS, some daycare centers do not train their employees or they neglect to review and enforce annual training requirements. This means that the caregiver looking after your child may be unaware of essential tasks like how to quickly respond when a child has an allergic reaction or how to report suspected abuse.
The Button Law Firm’s Proven Success to Make Daycare Centers Answer for Safety Failures
Our team of experienced daycare and child injury lawyers has worked with numerous families recovering from a daycare center that fails them, and we are here to help you navigate such a difficult situation. We are sharing how children can be impacted by a center’s failures and how our team at The Button Law Firm has made centers answer for their wrongdoings to get justice for the children and families.
Little Ones Get Hurt When Daycare Centers Do Not Hire Qualified Caregivers
When a daycare center fails to hire quality caregivers—this includes not completing mandatory background checks—little ones can be at risk of abuse. For example, unqualified caregivers are often ignorant of minimum standards and are likely to use improper discipline tactics such as hitting, threatening the child with punishment, or otherwise causing physical harm to them in order to discourage bad behavior.
In one case where we got justice for a family in Irving, an unqualified and untrained daycare employee repeatedly grabbed and hit a young boy as a form of punishment. The child was left with scrapes on his body and significant emotional trauma from the incident at the center.
In a separate case, a caregiver abused a 2-year-old boy at a facility in Carrollton. The state’s independent investigation found the caregiver had pushed the toddler onto his nap cot, causing him to fall and hit his head. The caregiver’s incompetence resulted in the child’s troubling injuries, and this was entirely preventable.
Our experienced team has also seen instances of unqualified workers hired at prestigious private schools. We helped a family get justice in DeSoto after a caregiver repeatedly humiliated and threatened their 4-year-old son. It was all caught on a surveillance camera: The teacher threatened to punch the child and take his blanket away if he did not listen to her.
Fortunately, our compassionate and knowledgeable team of daycare and child injury lawyers was able to hold each of these facilities accountable.
What Happens When Daycare Directors Are Not Supervising Their Staff?
Directors have a duty to make sure nothing bad happens to children on their watch. If management is not supervising their staff adequately, harm may happen without their knowledge.
When a little girl in Irving was left outside on the playground of her daycare center, none of the employees, including the director, noticed she was gone until her father showed up at the end of the workday to pick her up. Had the director been actively monitoring the facility and its caregivers, this little girl would not have been neglected and would not have suffered.
In another case, this time in Tyler, the failure of caregivers to properly supervise children on the playground resulted in a 4-year-old girl being sexually abused by other children. Staff at this daycare center were aware that children were using a part of the playground to go to the bathroom outside, and they knowingly ignored the behavior. When this girl went to use the bathroom outside, other children inappropriately touched her. Because staff were congregated in a single area of the playground, they were improperly supervising children on the playground, and nobody stopped the sexual abuse. It is a director’s duty to ensure its employees are abiding by Texas daycare laws, and in this case, they failed to do so.
In a case in Plano, upon inquiries by the parent, a caregiver admitted to using improper discipline tactics—spanking, in this case—on their 3-year-old daughter. However, when the center later provided their required incident report, it told a different story: The welts on the child’s bottom were from harshly putting on her bathing suit, not from the spanking that actually occurred. Directors are complicit in harms done by caregivers when they aid in covering up injuries that happen to children.
Fortunately, our knowledgeable daycare injury lawyers were able to work with the state in each of these cases and identified the wrongdoings of not only the caregivers but of the daycare center and its management as well.
How Does Lack of Staff Training Affect Children in Texas?
Our daycare injury lawyers have worked with several families in cases where a lack of knowledge on child safety regulations has caused little ones to experience traumatic incidents at a center.
In Leander, a child suffered a severe allergic reaction when he was bitten by ants. His throat began to swell, and the caregivers were unable to perform any care such as administering a lifesaving EpiPen. By the time emergency responders arrived at the daycare center, the boy was unconscious, his throat was swollen, and he was foaming at the mouth. Even worse, when caregivers wrote the incident report, they understated the issue as a “few bug bites.”
In another case, a little girl fell from playground equipment at a Mesquite daycare center and landed on her back. Untrained caregivers at the center did not properly supervise the little girl, where they could have intervened to prevent her fall. Caregivers also failed to seek medical attention for her or immediately report the incident to her parents. Instead, the young girl had trouble using her right arm and was limping, because of the center’s failures.
This happens more often than you may think. When a Denton family picked up their 1-year-old daughter at the end of the day and learned she had suffered severe burns from cleaning products, they contacted our team at The Button Law Firm. Untrained workers used a dangerous chemical cleaner on a mat that caused the toddler to suffer disfiguring chemical burns across her face. In addition, caregivers did not follow childcare protocols that include contacting parents to immediately to notify them about their toddler’s serious injuries.
Training is required for a reason, and our team fought to get justice for these families.
Was Your Child Injured at a Texas Daycare Center? Contact The Button Law Firm.
Our team of experienced and compassionate daycare injury attorneys at The Button Law Firm is dedicated to fighting for you and your family if your child was seriously hurt while in the care of a negligent daycare center anywhere in Texas. With attorneys in Dallas, Houston, and Midland, we are ready to listen, fight for your family, and help your family move forward. Our attorneys 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. Get a free consultation by calling 214-699-4409, emailing us at [email protected], or completing a contact form.
.png)
.png)
