ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Cautionary Day-Care Tale

It’s every parent’s nightmare. A child is delivered to a day-care center in the morning, but at night no one remembers whether the child ever arrived. Faced with such a real-life situation last week, Debbie Dunn, a nursing student who took her 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Katie, to Cypress College’s day-care center, said, “I can’t articulate the despair I felt.”

Unbeknown to her mother, Katie had dashed out the center’s front door, crossed a busy street, was picked up by a passer-by, held by police and finally turned over to Orangewood Children’s Home. An early check with the day-care center to see if a child was missing indicated that none was. Adding insult to injury, Dunn and her husband endured an all-night separation from Katie when Orangewood refused to release her without confirming that the Dunns were her parents. An Orangewood social worker now concedes that the staff should have made more of an effort to reunite the family quickly.

It’s good that an outside investigation of this scary incident is being conducted by state child-care authorities. The Dunns are understandably upset, while the center accuses Dunn of failing to make sure Katie was in the hands of its personnel before leaving. Of course, parents share this responsibility, as Cypress College President Kirk Avery said. But it may be that Avery was too quick to exonerate his staff and unnecessarily embarrass Dunn. No one disputes the fact that Katie was signed into the center at 8 a.m. Also, state law requires day-care centers to establish safe turnover procedures. The Cypress day-care center since has tightened security, which is good.

The incident is a cautionary tale, not just for Cypress College but for all day-care centers--and for parents as well: Nothing can be taken for granted. Next time, there might not be as happy an ending to the story.