Daycare child abuse can be maddeningly hard to detect. Abusers tend to be very good at what they do and know how to make sure they have access to children while keeping their activities concealed. Once you know some of the common things they look for, however, it does give you something of an advantage.
Abusers will generally look for facilities that are sloppy about their hiring practices for obvious reasons. If you’re checking out different daycare facilities for your child, ask them about their hiring practices. This is a situation where the criteria for a good facility aren’t particularly flexible. The facility should background check everyone on their staff, including maintenance people and bus drivers.
An abuser will look for a facility where they can find ways to be alone with children. There are cases where a facility has allowed daycare abuse to go on without even knowing it. This doesn’t absolve them of their responsibility for letting the abuse occur, of course, but abusers can be very good at creating opportunities. Make sure that the facility where your child spends their time doesn’t have places where children can be isolated by an abuser. Most facilities mix the kids up a lot so that they can have fun and socialize. Caregivers at good facilities work in teams. This ensures that there’s always more than one person around when someone is with one of the children and, of course, people working in teams can handle more work more efficiently than caregivers working alone.
Always use a licensed facility. There are cases where people have been victimized by abusers who worked in unlicensed facilities. The licensing requirements for daycare facilities exist for a reason and it’s about providing higher levels of service to parents and children. Daycare licensing also ensures that the workers at the facility are actually qualified to care for children professionally. This is a distinctly different challenge than caring for one’s own children.
Abuse in daycare oftentimes goes on for a long time before being discovered simply because people don’t know the signs. There’s no fault here; abusers think like abusers, normal people don’t, but you have to think like them sometimes to make sure you’re not setting yourself up for a bad situation. Once any abuse has been stopped, you may want to speak with an attorney about seeking financial compensation.