Are Home Daycares Dangerous For Sleeping Babies?

When you leave your child with a babysitter, you expect that person to keep your child safe. However, for many parents who trust in home daycares, the end result is the death of their child due to care providers not following safe practices for putting a baby to sleep.

According to The State, safe sleep practices are part of the laws regulating home daycares, but they often do not do any good. The system does not hold these providers liable, and many infant deaths that occur when they are asleep in a home daycare situation do not receive a full investigation.

Dangerous situations

All parents and those who care for infants should be aware of safe sleep habits. Since infants do not have good use of their neck muscles and are not strong enough to move like older children and adults, they can easily succumb to suffocation if something covers their faces. To protect babies, care providers should put them to sleep in a crib on their backs with no loose blankets, pillows or other items.

No legal help

While they must pass inspections and follow rules, home daycares do not face the strict oversight that state-run facilities do. This means they often do not follow guidelines all the time or do not follow them correctly. It is rare for anyone to face charges for a death in this type of situation. Since there is often little accountability for not following the rules, home daycares continue to be unsafe places for infants when it comes to safe sleeping and this will not change until laws change.