Kansas Health Institute | Information For Policy Makers. Health for Kansans.

TOPEKA — Bleary-eyed members of the Kansas House early Tuesday morning approved legislation requiring that all day care homes in the state be inspected and licensed.

On Monday, it appeared that Substitute for House Bill 2356 might end up as a political football in the end-of-session negotiations between the House and Senate as well as Republicans and Democrats.

House GOP leaders said members of their caucus were “troubled” by aspects of the bill. And Democratic leaders said the measure wasn’t a priority for many of their members.

Throughout the day two sets of parents who lost toddlers in day care accidents stood outside the House chamber among the Statehouse’s regular lobbyists. Fixtures at the Statehouse during the wrap-up session, the parents – Alecia and Steve Patrick and Kim and Bryan Engelman – said they were determined to be there if final action was taken on the day care bill.

“Everybody seeing us day in and day out, especially this last week, I think made the bill more real for them. I definitely know that our presence did not go unnoticed,” said Alecia Patrick, whose 18-month-old daughter, Ava, died last spring during her first day at a Johnson County day care when she became lodged in the slats of a makeshift baby fence.

Supporters say the bill would make Kansas day care homes safer by requiring all of them to be inspected and licensed.

Currently, about 2,500 of the approximately 6,700 homes in the state fall into a category that doesn’t require them to be licensed or routinely inspected.

The bill on its way to Democratic Gov. Mark Parkinson also requires the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to develop and enforce rules specifying how day care providers should supervise active and napping children under age 5. It also directs KDHE to develop a website that parents could use to compare and research providers.

To manage the workload and the cost of expanding inspections, an earlier version of the bill would have established a “risk-based” system. It directed KDHE to focus on bringing all the unlicensed facilities into compliance before resuming regular inspections of previously licensed providers.

The risk-based approach was scrapped in the House version of the bill. Instead, legislators said enough money could be generated to pay for annual inspections of all day care homes if KDHE and the local health departments they contract with to do inspections raised their licensing fees up to the $75 cap allowed under current law.

Kristi Pankratz, a KDHE spokesperson, said agency officials needed to study the bill further before deciding whether or not to raise fees.

Requiring routine inspection of all day care facilities helped overcome opposition to the bill, said Rep. Cindy Neighbor, D-Shawnee, who worked closely with House Health and Human Services Committee Chair Brenda Landwehr, R-Wichita, during the wrap-up session.

“This is a tremendous step forward for the quality of child care in Kansas,” Neighbor said moments after the House approved the measure 66-56.

The Senate voted, 29-9, on Saturday to approve the compromise version of the bill.

The House vote occurred at about 3 a.m. Tuesday after members concluded a lengthy debate on a bill to increase the state sales tax. House leaders decided to take up the day care bill staffers said, to spare the parents, who estimated they had made about 30 trips to Topeka since the start of the session, from having to come back for another day of waiting and watching.

Kim Engelman, whose 13-month-old daughter, Lexie, suffered fatal injuries on her third day at a Johnson County day care in 2004, said the outcome was worth the wait.

“We feel great about the end result despite the multiple roadblocks that have been set in front of us,” she said shortly after the vote. “We feel like we have a really good piece of legislation.”

Though the legislative process was occasionally frustrating, Alecia Patrick said she was glad all the parents were present for the final vote.

“We always knew that if we were going to start this process, we had to see it through,” she said. “And it was worth every moment.”

The late-session lobbying effort for the day care bill was lead by Kansas Action for Children. According to KAC, in the past three years 30 children died in Kansas child care facilities and 72 sustained serious injuries. The National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies recently ranked Kansas 47th for the strength of its child care center oversight and regulation.