Photo Courtesy of Comptroller Stringer’s Office
“As a parent of young children, I find this extremely disturbing,” Comptroller Stringer (at podium) said on Thursday.
By Forum Staff
The City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene failed to conduct required inspections of more than half of the child care centers that served the City’s Universal Pre-Kindergarten program in Fiscal Year 2017, according to a new audit released on Thursday by City Comptroller Scott Stringer.
Under its own rules, the agency is supposed to conduct two types of inspections each year at each center: one by an Early Childhood Education Consultant, focused on staffing and curriculum, and another by a Public Health Sanitarian, focused on physical conditions. Both types are called “initial inspections,” which trigger further investigation if deficiencies are found, Stringer said. Yet the audit uncovered that in FY17, DOHMH skipped both of those inspections at 73 centers and that hundreds of other centers received just one initial inspection, in direct violation of DOHMH protocols, the comptroller noted.
In its response to the audit’s findings, DOHMH indicated that it conducted what it refers to as monitoring and compliance inspections at all of the centers where violations were cited or for which complaints were received. However, as Stringer pointed out, under DOHMH’s protocols and according to its staff, monitoring and compliance inspections are not substitutes for the two mandatory initial inspections. DOHMH’s “initial inspections” are complete program reviews to determine whether child care centers are in compliance with the City Health Code. As such, they are more comprehensive than compliance and monitoring inspections, which focus on specific issues raised by prior inspections, complaints, or administrative actions.
According to the audit, department of Health records show that during FY17, a total of 531 of the 1,035 audited group child care centers failed to receive at least one required inspection, in violation of DOHMH protocol. Specifically, in addition to the 73 centers that received no initial inspection: 312 centers did not receive an inspection from an Early Childhood Education Consultant; and 146 centers did not receive an inspection from a Public Health Sanitarian. A further review of DOHMH inspection records for fiscal years 2015 through 2017 revealed a widespread and long-standing lack of oversight as DOHMH failed to perform all inspections at between 48 and 60 percent of audited centers in each year.
Stringer called on DOHMH to immediately inspect the 73 centers auditors uncovered. The comptroller also recommended that the agency reform its inspection tracking protocol and overhaul its reporting mechanism to ensure that reports and oversight processes do not allow initial inspections to be skipped or records to go missing.
Stringer also noted that this is the third audit that his office has conducted of DOHMH’s oversight of group child care centers, and the third in which notable deficiencies were found.
“For the safety and well-being of our children, DOHMH’s own rules require it to comprehensively inspect every child care center at least twice every year. Skipping inspections at hundreds of child care centers is unacceptable,” Stringer said. “As a parent of young children, I find this audit extremely disturbing. As comptroller, what’s even more alarming is that DOHMH refuses to acknowledge the problem and fix it. When it comes to protecting our city’s children, we cannot allow any agency to deny the facts.”
