DES MOINES – A former Mason City child care provider who was placed on the child abuse registry and stripped of her license to operate a daycare lost her appeal this week.
Dana Peterson operated Dana’s Daycare, a DHS-registered child care facility, for about seven years preceding the appeal. The facility is located next door to her home. Sometime before April 2011, Peterson purchased a four-unit stackable crib from a seller on Craigslist for use in the nursery area. The unit featured four spaces in which children could sleep, two on each side, and two on each level. The wood-slatted front slid up a track to allow access to the bottom cribs. The two bottom cribs were covered by the floor of the two upper cribs; the two upper cribs were open at the top. The cribs stood approximately five foot, four inches tall. Peterson did not have any manufacturer’s documents or stickers indicating usage limits by age or weight.
In April 2011, Wendy Taylor, a registered nurse with North Iowa Community Action (NICA), visited Peterson’s facility to complete an injury-prevention checklist. Taylor’s visit was routine and not prompted by a complaint. Taylor expressed uncertainty about the safety of the stackable crib unit, and said she would need to research whether the unit met DHS requirements for equipment in a day care facility. While Taylor could not locate information on Peterson’s particular unit because of the missing manufacturer’s identification, she researched stackable cribs and found a flyer published by Healthy Child Care Iowa, a campaign sponsored by the Iowa Department of Public Health. Taylor concluded the stackable crib unit would very likely not meet DHS requirements. During a second visit approximately a week later, Taylor gave the flyer to Peterson and offered Peterson free, metal crib units satisfying DHS requirements, provided Peterson agreed to destroy the stackable crib unit. Peterson agreed and soon received the new cribs.
Several months later, in July 2011, the DHS received a complaint from a parent of one of the children in Peterson’s day care. The parent complained that her child, when placed into the stackable crib unit, looked as if the child was in a cage—the crib “is covered on top and has a door on it.” In response, the agency sent social worker Michelle Lehman and child-care specialist Angie Huntington to Peterson’s facility. During their unannounced visit on July 26, 2011, Lehman and Huntington saw the stackable crib unit in use in the nursery. They noticed one child in a top crib with no mattress. Upon inquiry, Lehman and Huntington were informed the child, who appeared to be about two years old, did not have a mattress because she tended to throw it out. Lehman and Huntington reasoned that if the child had the strength to throw her mattress out of the crib, she likely also had the strength to climb out of the crib, presenting a significant fall risk. Additionally, both Dutch doors—doors split in the middle, allowing the top and bottom halves to open and close independently of one another—leading into the nursery were closed, and the children inside the nursery were not in the company of an adult nor were they within the line of sight of an adult.
Finally, Autumn King, Peterson’s daughter, was the only adult in the child care facility when the DHS representatives arrived. King said she was an approved provider or was in the process of becoming approved. King further said Peterson was next door at her residence where she also provides child care. Lehman and Huntington told Peterson, once she arrived at the facility, about the dangers associated with the stackable crib unit and advised her not to use the top cribs. They drafted a safety plan in which Peterson agreed (1) to discontinue use of the top cribs until approved, (2) to leave the top half of the Dutch door open to the nursery for the purpose of supervision of the children, and (3) to have both providers at the facility when more than eight children were there.
Lehman and Huntington gathered additional information that prompted another visit.
Two days later, on July 28, 2011, Lehman and Huntington made an unannounced follow-up visit. When Lehman and Huntington arrived at Dana’s Daycare, they found (1) Peterson was still using the stackable crib units, (2) King, again, was the only provider on site with more than eight children (King was not an approved co-provider and was not eligible to be in the home), and (3) both halves of the Dutch door were closed. Peterson had not followed any of the requirements of the safety agreement she signed on July 26. In the intervening two days, Peterson had consulted with her lawyer, who advised she could continue using the stackable crib unit because it had not been recalled. During the DHS follow-up visit, Peterson had her husband and son remove the stackable crib unit from the facility. During this same visit, the representatives confirmed reports Peterson had been providing child care in an unapproved location—her home.
The DHS determined the risk for harm to the children met the classification of child abuse under Iowa Code and because the risk was not minor, isolated, and unlikely to reoccur—the test used to determine registry placement—the DHS placed the incident on the abuse registry under Iowa Code. In addition to placing the incident on the abuse registry, the agency also revoked Peterson’s approval to provide registered child care services under Iowa Code.
Peterson appealed the revocation and the placement of the incidents on the abuse registry.
The Appeals Court noted that the record contains extensive notes from nurse Taylor and from the DHS social worker regarding their investigations of Peterson’s alleged child abuse and her lack of compliance with the applicable code provisions. The hearing transcript also includes the witnesses’ testimony under oath as to their safety concerns regarding Peterson’s use of the stackable crib unit, the supervision issues they noted, and their observations about Peterson’s dishonesty during the investigation.
The court also strongly questioned Peterson’s honesty, specifically her continued insistence that her daughter, King, was an approved provider. In support, she presented an approval notice from the DHS that had been hand-modified and signed by King. The DHS’s original version contained no such modification. Further, it was established during King’s initial application to be an approved provider in 2009, the local DHS representative explained to King via phone why her application was denied and that she would not be eligible to be approved for five years. The phone call was followed by letters to King and Peterson; both women deny having received such letters. This led the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) to conclude, in an effort to deceive, Peterson and King altered the approval form. The district court adopted the ALJ’s assessment in this instance as well.
Peterson contended in her appeal that the DHS workers adopted the attitude “I know an infraction when I see one” and “I can make up the rules as I go along.” To the contrary, the record shows Peterson was first warned in April of the potential for problems relating to the stackable crib unit. She was also provided with approved alternative cribs, and chose not to use them. Most tellingly, DHS representatives officially informed her that she needed to change her practices during their first unannounced visit to the home. When they returned two days later, she was still violating the safety plan she had signed and agreed to during the first visit. The agency actions were neither arbitrary nor capricious.
Sounds to me like it’s a mother and daughter disaster waiting to happen. Honesty is a HUGE problem for them also. Bottom line children’s safety is a huge risk with these two women in my opinion, I’m glad DHS went back repeatedly unannounced, they need to do this way more often and protect the children instead of waiting for one to die or be abused before they start enforcing rules.
What really sticks out? People are to dam lazy (or stupid) to take care of themselves and then expect the Gov’ment to take care of their personal responsibilities.
And it sure don’t help that these lazy ass DHS workers try and justify their made up jobs by finding fault with everything they can to justify their ‘should be’ unnecessary job.
What a crock!
This just shows that these idiots that do illegal drugs will have it come back to haunt them all the rest of their lives. It also shows that we live in a damn nanny state where common sense is overruled by government officials looking for a reason to justify their overpaid jobs.
Example of way to much government. It’s obvious how our system of agency’s protect each other. DHS squeaks some nonsense and the Courts back them up. Pretty scary.
Reads like the DHS is borrowing trouble from tomorrow. Here we have the DHS baby sitting the baby sitter. Too funny.
Don’t like the baby sitters style get someone else to watch your kids.
What a waste of taxpayer money!
Can’t see the logic in your argument. Allowing a known druggie with a criminal record to watch 8 children? This is OK to you? Drop yours off there, and cross your fingers, if you dare. If DHS didn’t watch the daycare providers, they would gravitate to the dumb, stupid, least-expensive, laziest forms of child care they could provide, much of the time. That’s when the tragedies start to occur. By the way, the DHS wasn’t the only one babysitting the babysitter, as you put it. The Iowa criminal system was babysitting the daughter, whom the mother left in charge. In other words, the mother convinced the parents she had a great business. Then left the kids with the daughter. Parents might not have even known. Sometimes people like this are called con-artists. Those kids are lucky DHS followed up on the complaint. (DHS did not invent a job to do here. The complaint justified the visit in the first place). Take your politics out of this and be reasonable if you are capable of that.
A druggie? What kind of talk is that. We are a nation drug users. 1 in 4 women over 50 are on SSRI’s and that’s better than cannabis? I’m not following your biased, convoluted and arrogant thinking.
Arrogant? Maybe, but if you trust people under the influence of drugs to care for your children, I hope DHS pays you a visit next.
Why, do you think I’m taking care of kids while on drugs? Shame on you. Most people are on hard drugs at any given time. See, once again your perspective is biased and narrow. You don’t think deep enough.