Teacher Tai, Shih-Mei accepted an interview with United News Network
Teacher Tai, Shih-Mei accepted an interview with United News Network: The daycare center has not clearly regulated experts: it is difficult to make up for and break through the network of childcare laws
Experts in the lack of clear regulations for childcare centers: Difficulty in supplementing and breaking the network of childcare laws
2024-03-16 03:41 United Daily/Reporter LIN, TSUNGEN and CHEN,YUHSIN/Taipei Report
A boy was brutally killed by his nanny, and various sectors are paying attention to how to prevent malicious nannies. Minister of Health and Welfare HSUEH,JUIYUAN recently proposed to prevent child abuse through the Child Care Services Act, which is independent of the Child Rights Act. The draft version of the law by the Ministry of Health and Welfare has been drafted by the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s Social Affairs Office and was announced to the public last year. However, experts have pointed out that the draft does not provide clear regulations for the county and city home-based childcare service centers responsible for the quality of childcare, which makes it difficult to achieve the effect of improving the quality of childcare.
Huang CHIAO, spokesperson for the Alliance for the Promotion of Childcare Policy, stated that childcare centers are regarded as the “gatekeepers” for the safety and quality of childcare, and are also the first line of defense. Nurses need to obtain qualifications, and childcare centers in each county and city need to send personnel to their homes to review the environment, personal health certificates, and good citizen certificates. The center then presents a report to the local social bureau, which is approved and issued to practice registration.
Huang CHIAO stated that in the current draft of the daycare special law, there is no mandatory regulation for assisting matchmaking or reviewing the business content of daycare personnel in the daycare center. The draft only specifies what business the daycare center should do and does not elevate the regulation to what business it should do, resulting in different business projects for daycare centers in each county and city, and inconsistent quality of nannies issued for practice registration in each county and city.
Taking the abused boy “Kai Kai” as an example, in addition to the child care workers from the Children’s League, the care center in Wenshan District, Taipei City, where his nanny is located, also needs regular visits. According to the timeline provided by the Taipei City Social Bureau to Taipei City Councilors, social workers from the daycare center visited on September 26 last year and stated in the visit report that Kai Kai was unable to naturally integrate into the daycare area. However, the daycare center did not follow up again, and upon receiving the information again, it was found that Kai Kai had died, which also raised doubts about whether the daycare center and the social bureau were fulfilling their supervisory responsibilities.
Tai, Shih-Mei, an associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Ming Chuan University, stated that although the draft of the daycare special law increases the admission rate for caregivers, it is difficult to improve the quality of care. Moreover, the excellent ability of caregivers to take care of their children does not mean that they will not commit crimes. The two cannot be discussed together. In order to prevent crimes committed by caregivers, the current childcare centers or caregiver residences do not have third-party regulatory measures for camera settings. Whenever a child abuse incident occurs, it is found that the camera is always broken, which also fails to meet the requirements of crime prevention or deterrence.
Tai, Shih-Mei believes that when facing serious cases of child abuse in society, there is always high discussion and no resolution. Child abuse incidents occur repeatedly, and parents’ fear of childcare and distrust of the quality of nannies will only become increasingly severe. Why do early childhood educators or childcare workers have a high incidence of “caring for death” cases? If we want to prevent congestion incidents from happening again, we need to work hard to identify the essence of the problem and find a solution.
