An Ontario mother is calling on the government to institute a policy where daycare staff contact parents of absent children in hopes of preventing car accident deaths.
The idea came about last month after a 23-month-old boy died after he was accidentally left in a hot car outside his mother’s workplace in Bancroft, Ontario. His death not only shocked the community, but parents across the province were shocked at the loss.
Alicia Wilson, a mother of three in Whitby, Ontario. she was one of those parents.
“I don’t know the family, but it really suited me,” Alicia Wilson told CTV News Toronto. “I kept thinking, ‘what can we do to prevent this?’ This death is so… it’s so sad and so tragic.”
The result was a petition urging the government to establish a “Safe Arrivals” policy for day care centers in Ontario. The idea is that parents are notified if their child does not show up as scheduled.
This policy itself is not new. In 1999, the Ontario government at the time issued a memorandum making it mandatory for schools to have a safe arrival program that “will account for any student’s unexplained failure to arrive at school.”
For him Toronto District School Board, means that parents should contact their child’s school if they are going to be absent. If they do not, they will receive an automated phone call informing them that their child has not arrived. If the parent or guardian does not respond after three attempts, the school will call them again in the evening.
Wilson argues that it should be relatively simple for day care centers to enact a similar policy.
“Our nurseries have to take attendance. Our daycares have to call parents when a child is injured there or when they get sick. But they don’t have to call us if they don’t show up,” she said. “So I started this petition.”
that request it now has more than 2,000 signatures. Wilson says the response has been “overwhelmingly positive.”
“It’s like realizing this isn’t happening in our daycares, it’s just happening in our schools,” she said. “Some people are concerned about accountability, but if our school systems are doing this, why can’t our daycares?”
He stressed that the policy is not intended to blame day care centers or other child care facilities for hot car deaths, but instead provides an “extra layer of protection for Ontario’s children.”
“My hope is that if this policy can be implemented in daycare and child care, if a parent forgets the child in the car, getting this phone call will trigger that memory and force them to remember, and could save the life of the child. little boy. life.”
Experts have said that forgetting a child in the back seat is a tragic accident that can happen to anyone. A 2019 study by researchers at the University of Toronto and the Hospital for Sick Children found that in the US, an average of 37 children die each year after being left in a hot car.
Just over half of those cases are due to a caregiver inadvertently leaving a child due to stress, fatigue or changes in routine.
In the case of Everett Smith in Bancroft, his family said something stressful had happened earlier in the day and dropping the boy off at daycare was not part of his mother’s daily routine.
Everett Smith, who would have turned two next month, is seen in this photo provided by Bancroft Mayor Paul Jenkins.
The boy was left in the car while his mother, who teaches at a school, went to work. He was found unconscious at the end of the day.
An investigation into the incident is ongoing.
Wilson, who has a son Everett’s age, says he can’t imagine what the parents are experiencing.
“I wake up every morning with my son and I can see him grow up, but this mother in Bancroft who wakes up at the same time as me, has the same weather as me, doesn’t understand that anymore,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a good parent or a bad parent, it doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, it can happen.”
A spokesman for the Ministry of Education said that licensed nurseries can choose to implement a safe arrival policy as long as it does not interfere with any other requirements of the Child Care and Early Years Act.
They also said the ministry “continually assesses health and safety requirements for child care in Ontario to ensure the province maintains its high health, safety and quality standards for licensed child care.” This includes listening to feedback from parents, child care programs, experts, and members of the public.
The spokesperson did not specifically address whether or not they would consider requiring a safe arrival policy for licensed child care operators.
With Canadian Press archives