Cottage industries can be a good thing, but there are some services that they cannot provide at the level of a professional business. Among those services, typically, is daycare. Some of the people who provide daycare services from their home are not fully licensed, and thus, not fully trained to handle the job. This means that you’re setting up a situation where you may become the victim of abuse in daycare and your child may well suffer for it.
When people think of daycare child abuse, they usually think of physical abuse or sexual abuse. This is not the only type of abuse. Negligence can cause just as many problems and, in some cases, it can cause problems that are more difficult to deal with. While it’s usually easy for a medical professional to find the signs of physical abuse, the signs of psychological abuse or neglect are oftentimes very difficult to detect and, because of that, they can start creating damage that can fester for years. If you use a small daycare facility, make sure that they’re fully licensed and that their staff is fully trained. You definitely want to avoid daycare facilities that are really just one person taking children in at their own home. This is particularly the case if they are not registered as an official daycare with the state.
A professional daycare facility offers quite a lot of peace of mind. When the staff is properly licensed and when the facility is inspected regularly by state regulators, you can rest assured that everything is on the up and up. When a daycare facility is operating essentially underground, you have none of these assurances. You may know the person who operates it and you may know them to be a good parent, but that doesn’t mean that they’re actually qualified to take care of other people’s children.
Home daycare facilities are generally not the best ways to go when you want to make sure that your child is going to a safe, professional and secure environment. The only way to make sure that you are sending your children to a qualified facility is to rely on the licensing requirements and reporting requirements of the state. It may be cheaper to use a home daycare service, but it’s always a much greater risk to your child and (of course) to yourself.