RI Report Finds Child Care Providers Have Significant Noncompliance Issues

RI Report Finds Child Care Providers Have Significant Noncompliance Issues

                       

The Rhode Island Office of the Auditor General has identified significant noncompliance with each of the 50 child care facilities it recently reviewed.

The office randomly selected 25 home and 25 professional setting facilities and found at least one deficiency in every one of them.

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In the sweeping report, the Auditor General found noncompliance in safety, health, and background checks of workers. 

“These instances of potentially hazardous conditions and noncompliance indicate that additional measures need to be taken to ensure that providers comply with mandated health and safety requirements for children in their care,” said the report.

This comes just days after GoLocal unveiled that the inspection reports for day care facilities — a key tool for parents in selecting a facility are presently not available online.

For Auditor General David A. Bergantino, who took over the office in January of 2023, this is the second major performance audit conducted by his office.

 

The Auditor General’s office found:

- 232 instances of noncompliance with provider facility health and safety requirements.

- 920 instances of noncompliance with documentation requirements for providers and staff. Documentation deficiencies were noted for 320 of the 464 staff members reviewed.

- Noncompliance with background check requirements for providers and staff was noted at 26 of 50 child care providers reviewed. Required documentation was lacking for 72 of the 464 child care staff members reviewed.

- Noncompliance with child record documentation requirements were noted at 43 of 50 child care providers reviewed. Child record documentation requirements were not met for 174 of the 622 children reviewed at provider locations.

These findings resulted from the Auditor General’s recently completed performance audit titled Child Care Provider Compliance With Health and Safety Standards.

The audit’s objective was to determine whether the Department of Human Services, Office of Child Care’s (OCC) monitoring procedures ensured that Family Child Care (FCC) and Child Care Center (CCC) providers complied with licensing requirements related to the health and safety of children in their care.

Although the OCC conducted the required desk audits and site visits at all 50 providers that we reviewed, these procedures did not adequately ensure provider compliance with health and safety requirements.

 

The audit report included the following recommendations:

- Improve child care provider compliance with health and safety requirements by a) ensuring that all inspection deficiencies noted are immediately addressed by providers, b) developing a training program to improve ongoing provider compliance with health and safety requirements, and c) determining the appropriate level and frequency of on-site provider monitoring needed to significantly improve provider compliance (inclusive of the resources needed for enhanced monitoring).

- Improve monitoring of provider compliance with staff documentation requirements by enhancing documentation reviews for providers and staff during site visits.
(a) Improve monitoring of provider compliance with employee background checks (e.g., criminal background checks, Child Abuse and Neglect Central Registry Check) by enhancing documentation reviews for providers and staff during site visits. (b) Implement procedures requiring providers to submit documentation of staff background checks to OCC for review and approval prior to work commencement.

- Improve monitoring of child record documentation requirements (e.g., immunization records, emergency treatment forms) by enhancing documentation reviews during site visits.

- The audit also reported a matter that, in our judgment, warranted the attention and consideration of those charged with oversight of the state’s child care program and specifically, laws, regulations, and policies that govern the health and safety of enrolled children. The audit noted that the state, unlike 20 other states including Connecticut, has no statutory or regulatory requirements regarding residency restrictions for sex offenders that live near a child care provider. To assess the risks posed by the exclusion of child care centers from the definition of “school” in the sex offender residency statute (RIGL §11-37.1), the audit analyzed all licensed Rhode Island child care provider addresses against the online RI Sex Offender Registry. Our analysis identified 59 instances in which the addresses of Level 2 and Level 3 sex offenders were found living 300 feet or less from child care providers.

- The Auditor General conducted this performance audit in accordance with Government Auditing Standards. Management’s response to the findings and recommendations, including planned corrective actions, are detailed in the report.

This story was first published 8/12/25 1:48 PM