Local daycare paid fine, will provide new training and consulting to personnel
By Jason Emerson
After twice leaving a child unattended and being threatened with license revocation by the state of New York, Cazenovia Children’s House has reached an agreement with the Office of Children and Family Services to stay in business.
The CCH Board of Directors announced this week that it had “resolved” its health and safety issues with the state and entered into an agreement with the OCFS under which Cazenovia Children’s House will provide its personnel with training and consulting services in certain areas from certified trainers approved by the OCFS. The CCH will also pay a fine.
“OCFS believes that all parents deserve access to quality, safe child care and has worked with the Cazenovia Children’s House to bring it into compliance with state regulations,” said Monica Mahaffey, OCFS public information officer. “OCFS is requiring Cazenovia Children’s House to pay a fine and is requiring that all leadership and staff receive additional intensive training from OCFS-approved trainers to promote safety for children in their care. When the required training has been completed, OCFS will update the status of the program’s license in our online database.”
CCH training will include areas such as child supervision and related topics, and consulting services will include the periodic observation and providing feedback, as well as guidance on how staff implement the center’s policies on student/teacher transition and supervision.
“The Board and staff of Cazenovia Children’s House are strongly committed to the training and consultation outlined in the agreement with the OCFS. In fact, during the past few months, we have already started providing our staff with training in these areas and undertaken a comprehensive policy review,” stated CCH Board President Beryl Wright CCH Executive Director Sierra Neil in a letter this week. “We intend to complete the agreed-upon training as quickly and effectively as possible, and to continue a strong and rigorous training program for staff.”
CCH’s issues involve twice leaving a child — in fact, the same child — unattended, once in September 2017 and again in February 2018. In addition to those two violations, the entire available inspection history of CCH shows that the local day care center has received more than one dozen operational violations since 2015 in areas including health and safety issues, administrative policies, medical procedures and medicinal administration, storage procedures and records management.
CCH officials self-reported the two unsupervised child incidents to the OCFS, both of which led to the state instituting enforcement actions against the day care provider, including license suspension.
After the 2017 incident, the teacher responsible was suspended, OCFS suspended and proposed to revoke the Cazenovia Children’s House license due to a failure of the Center to provide competent supervision and the program was fined $3,500. CCH was allowed to re-open after it submitted a revised supervision plan.
After the February incident, the OCFS moved to revoke the Cazenovia Children’s House child care license and CCH officials filed for an administrative hearing over the issue.
With the agreement between the CCH and the OCFS, the Cazenovia day care business can continue operation.
“The Board and executive director want to assure you that Cazenovia Children’s House is strongly committed to providing all of its children with a safe and nurturing environment in which they can learn and develop,” stated Wright and Neil. “We will go to any length to ensure that we provide your children with that environment, and we view our agreement with the OCFS as a positive step in enhancing our efforts in this regard.”
Cazenovia Children’s House, located at 2757 Route 20 East in Cazenovia, is a not-for-profit organization that has been providing childcare and preschool education for families in Cazenovia since 1970.
