Daycare abuse reports stalled by privacy concerns
April 18, 2011
Comments on this story
(0)
Rob Ferguson
QUEEN’S PARK BUREAU
It’s “unacceptable” Ontario hasn’t met a 2007 promise to widely publish reports on inspections and serious incidents at daycare centres, Education Minister Leona Dombrowsky said Monday.
But while she has ordered staff to make sure inspection reports and daycare licenses are posted online “within a month” to help parents assess their child care options, Dombrowsky set no deadline for posting reports on incidents such as abuse, mistreatment, serious injury or deaths, blaming privacy issues.
“The government has failed miserably,” New Democrat Leader Andrea Horwath said after the broken promise was revealed in a Star story headlined “Daycare abuses kept secret.”
Daycare centres are required to report any missing children, disasters on the premises such as a flood or infestation, along with incidents of abuse, mistreatment, serious injury or death. A Star investigation four years ago found some children had been hit, kicked, allowed to play in filthy conditions or fed allergy-triggering food.
“Parents have a right to know … what kinds of incidents have occurred so that they can make appropriate choices,” Horwath added, noting there were 5,510 incidents reported at child-care centres last year.
Dombrowsky said her ministry has been working with Ontario’s privacy commissioner on how the information can be released.
“This is about privacy of individuals who may have been involved in a particular incident in a child-care facility,” she told the Legislature, noting her department took over the file from another ministry earlier this year.
“We are committed to making sure that families have it, but we want to make sure that when we do, it is provided in a way that is also sensitive.”
Horwath said those are “weasel words” from the minister.
“That, to me, raised some red flags. The idea that this is somehow a wrestling match with the privacy commissioner seems a bit hard to believe after four years,” the NDP leader added.
The issue arose after a Star investigation in 2007 revealed abuses and unsafe conditions in some daycares, prompting the government to promise it would post detailed information on a public website.
Currently, parents shopping for a daycare centre can go on a government website that reveals if a daycare is licensed, along with any conditions on that licence — but not the problems that led to the conditions being set.
Dombrowsky said inspection reports are now available at each daycare site, but not yet online.
Andrea Calver, coordinator of the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care, said the province should follow Toronto’s lead in posting its findings from incident reports. The city apparently doesn’t have an issue with privacy concerns, putting child safety as its primary concern.
“Toronto isn’t just posting when there is a problem,” Calver said. “They are routinely posting everything.”
With files from Dale Brazao