We'd all read stories about day-care horrors, the tales of abuse and neglect that leave readers with a sense of disgust and fear but little understanding.
So when other Charlotte Observer staffers and I decided to assess the state of child care in North Carolina, we knew we needed to do more than simply lay out the parental nightmares.
We needed an authoritative way to find out how often day-care kids are mistreated, where it's most likely to happen and why. The challenge was daunting, but computer databases made it less so. Using Foxpro, we analyzed tens of thousands of records in databases kept by state day-care regulators. That - along with scores of interviews, visits to day cares and trips to state filing cabinets-helped us illustrate the consequences of the state's lax day-care rules. Here's some of what we found: Each month, more than 100 North Carolina children are hurt so badly in day care that they require medical treatment. That's partly because day-care staffing requirements in North Carolina are among the nation's most lenient. Children are more likely to be neglected or abused at centers that meet only minimal state requirements. Complaint rates are particularly high at the state's smallest day cares, which are based in homes and subject to the least state scrutiny of all. The rate of substantiated complaints at the state's two largest chains - KinderCare and La Petite Academy- is more than twice that of the average center in North Carolina. Over the past five years, state officials have discovered nearly 1,700 North Carolina day cares operating illegally. More children were neglected and abused in those homes than in all the legally registered child-care homes combined. Inspectors don't punish or close many problem day cares. Though state inspectors substantiated more than 1,400 complaints against day cares during the past two years, they revoked just 36 licenses and issued only 138 fines. The databases proved useful in other ways as well. They steered us to the child-care centers with the worst track records. And they helped us produce comprehensive summaries of all recent state actions against day cares in the Piedmont. Lots of work - and a little resourcefulness - went into those summaries.
We used the databases to generate a list of all recent state actions against day cares in the 10-county region. Trouble was, the computer files didn't give us a full account of what happened and how the day care responded to the state's action. So we took our list Raleigh, and pulled the files on each day care cited.
Armed with laptops, we plowed through the files and created our own databases, entering information about what happened and how the day cares responded.
To be fair and accurate, we later tried to contact the owners of each day care. Then we printed the summaries in their entirety.
If you're looking for databases with information on child-care centers, start by asking the state agency that regulates them. In North Carolina, it's the state Division of Child Development, an arm of the state Department of Human Services.
Without too much coaxing, we got databases with a great deal of valuable information: complaints against day cares; injuries among children; names of day care owners and their phone numbers; whether each day care was licensed or registered; how many children each center was licensed to care for, etc.
One thing to keep in mind: It's not fair to compare the raw number of complaints at each center.
You need to calculate complaint rates, based on the number of children each center is licensed to care for. And when figuring those rates, it's best to use substantiated complaints, rather than total complaints. Not every parent's gripe is well-founded, experts note.
In the end, computers could do only a small part of the work. We spent much of our time visiting day cares, poring through state records and interviewing teachers, parents and experts.
But used well, databases can make your child-care stories more powerful, accurate and downright interesting.