Boots and Bows

My children were enrolled here this week, but I pulled them out of the daycare before the end of the week because I was concerned for their safety and well-​being. Initially the place seemed great — it is spacious, with lots of fun toys to play with. However, on all three days my children were there, the daycare was severely understaffed. On their last day, at drop off (7 AM), there was 1 staff member and 23 children. I asked the staff member if that was a normal morning and was told that it was. On a different morning (at 9 AM during a snow delay), I counted 27 children (including 6 babies under 16 months) and only 2 staff members.
Indiana law states that a class 1 home daycare license (which is the type of license this establishment has) can only have 12 children (plus 3 children in grade 1+ before and after school) for a maximum of 15 at any one time. The ratio of babies less than 12 months to staff is 4:1, the ratio of babies and toddlers less than 24 months (with at least 2 older than 16 months) to staff is 6:1, and mixed groups of kids birth-​6 years (with no more than 3 less than 16 months) to staff is 10:1. This is kinda complicated, so let me explain that on the morning when I counted 27 children (incl. 6 babies) and 2 staff they had 11 children too many, and on the morning I counted 23 children (mixed group of babies, preschoolers and school age kids) and 1 staff, they had 13 children too many. I believe that these laws and ratios are set for a reason, so that parents can be reasonably certain that when they enroll their children in daycare, their children are taken care of. I do not think that a 23:1 children to staff ratio results in children that are well taken care of.
Boots and Bows holds two class 1 home daycare licenses. This does not mean they can lump all the children together and have a maximum of 30 children. When a facility has two licenses, it has to act as two independent daycares (with a max of 12+3 children each). The children at each daycare need to be separated at all times by a firewall. Each of the two independent daycares needs to have the necessary equipment and facilities (bathroom, kitchen, microwave, sink, refrigerator etc). On the days my children attended this week, they should have had the children separated into 2 groups, and should have had 3 – 4 staff members present.
Although the poor ratios of staff to children were my main concern, I also saw a lot of other things that concerned me. I saw 6 school age kids with no adult supervision behind a closed door. I saw a newborn asleep in a carseat, and for a few minutes no staff members were even in the same room as he was. I saw multiple children crying at different times, without any staff members offering comfort to them or even in the same area as them. I saw a school age kid pick up a crawling child and no staff was watching their interaction or even nearby. I saw a staff member hand a school age child an infant and allow her to bottle feed him (maybe the infant’s mother knew about this and was okay with it, maybe not. The school age child seemed pretty inexperienced to me and was not even holding on to the bottle, letting the infant lie flat across her lap.)
In sum, I do not recommend Boots and Bows daycare and suggest parents look elsewhere for daycare, especially for little babies.