Blossoms Childcare Center 3 (Blossoms Childcare Inc)

Observation

An infant was placed to sleep at the far end of the space, not within visual range of the staff who were in the other portion of the space. The sound machines were turned up, preventing staff from hearing the child if in distress. Dispute Description: I removed a wall at great expense and the department's suggestion, to ensure that the room is considered one space. My whole management team, Lalaine, Janelle, and Jeni had a big discussion about how the room would be considered as one space as long as I did not block or gate the area that the wall was removed from. The violation we received states that staff had placed an infant to sleep in a separate area where they did not actively supervise but there is no separate area to the space so this cannot be valid. The WAC states that a sleeping infant must be actively supervised by visibly checking every 15 minutes and be in sight and hearing RANGE. The infant and the staff were all in the same space therefore were in range of sight and hearing. I had 4 infants and 3 teachers on site that day. One teacher was on break. This is certainly an exceptional ratio. The violation also states that the sound machines were too loud to hear the child. That is the opinion and not a WAC. We have had multiple conversations about the ambiguous definition concerning what too loud and too dark is. It is the opinion of the staff that the sound machine was not too loud to hear a distressed child. We were told it was too loud at the visit which again my staff questions, but they did what they were told and lowered the volume. During one of our initial visits before we were licensed we prepared the infant room as if a child was napping and asked Jeni if this would be considered acceptable light. She was unable to give us a direct yes or no answer. We pressed for an answer and asked if she would give us a safe sleep violation at this exact moment if children were present. Again, she was unable to give us a specific yes or no answer. She said she could “probably see a child breathing” even though everyone else in the room agreed the light was more than sufficient. After this meeting we followed up with Jeni by email and asked if we could get a light meter and specific regulations from her. We never received a definite response. We are unsure about how we can avoid safe sleep violations in the future when we are provided no clarification and everything is up to her discretion. We sincerely believe the sound machines were at an acceptable volume and that we violated no safe sleep rules on November 7th.