Daycare Ratio's

I should be doing other things during my "quiet" time! However, this totally annoys me so I'm blogging about it! Did you know that they are proposing to change the family child care ratio's due to the amount of SIDS deaths we have had in MN Family Child Care homes?

Here is what they are proposing it be changed to:

For large family child care homes:
< 12 months age -- 2 children/1 adult maximum ratio -- 6 maximum group size
13-23 months age -- 2 children/1 adult maximum ratio -- 8 maximum group size
24-35 months age -- 3 children/1 adult maximum ratio -- 12 maximum group size
3 year olds -- 7 children/1 adult maximum ratio -- 12 maximum group size
4-5 year-olds -- 8 children/1 adult maximum ratio --12 maximum group size
6-8 year-olds -- 10 children/1 adult maximum ratio -- 12 maximum group size
9-12 year-olds -- 12 children/1 adult maximum ratio -- 12 maximum group size

For small family child care homes, including provider's children:
No children under age 2 - capacity of 1 to 6 children over 2 years-old
1 child under age 2 - capacity of 1 to 3 children over 2 years-old
2 children under age 2 - capacity - no children over age 2

I'm not sure how they expect a child care provider to be able to make a living on these amounts of children. Seriously, everyone usually has at least 1 infant, sometimes 2 in care at the same time. So, according to these, you would only be able to have a maximum of 6 or 8 children total. I think that this is going to raise daycare rates thru the roof, not to mention where are these other children supposed to go? To a center? Probably!!

I think that if they change it to these ratio's, great... However, this should apply to newly licensed provider's, I do agree that they should make them do more training when they get licensed and maybe totally do so many hours on SIDS... but why punish the rest of the provider's for it? Or maybe, leave it up to the licensor's discretion? I don't know, but I don't like these new ratio's!

I guess time will tell what will happen!