How safe is your child’s day care?

It’s a question that’s hugely important to any parent who entrusts a child to the care of professional caregivers. Until now, however, the state did not provide parents easy access to information about what inspectors found inside the state’s child care centers.

Starting this month, the Tennessee Department of Human Services has begun posting all violations found at state-licensed child care providers on its website.

The new reports show spotless records for many East Tennessee day cares. 10News reviewed Knox County’s 235 day care violations. There were some violations of concern including: day cares not reporting children biting, not changing wet diapers, inspectors observing children eating off dirty floors and tables, broken glass and parts on a playground, and children left unsupervised on the playground.

They also reveal scores of disturbing violations in Middle Tennessee day cares.

Those include dirty changing tables, children left unsupervised, caretakers slapping toddlers and subjecting young children to inappropriately long “time-outs,” and infants put to sleep on their stomachs instead of their backs — a practice linked to sudden infant death syndrome.

The newly posted reports don’t go as far as those of 32 other states, which post their full inspection reports online. Those reports provide more details about what the inspector found, as well as information about whether a child-care center was fined, put on probation or suspended. The Department of Human Services also doesn’t do what 28 other states routinely do: post every complaint against a child-care center on its website.

To get that information, parents must contact a program evaluator listed on the child-care center’s report.

Department officials said they began posting new information because they “wanted to provide another tool to assist parents in choosing child care.” Additionally, they noted, such information is soon expected to become a federal requirement.

Finding child care center’s violation history

• Log on to http://tennessee.gov/humanserv/adfam/ccfcc.html.

• Select “Click here to search by county” or “Click here for an interactive search by typing in your address.”

• Locate your child care center.

• Select “compliance history” for a PDF of the report listing violations.

Licensed child care providers are subject to unannounced visits at a minimum of 4 to 6 times per year. DHS Child Care Licensing Program Evaluators conduct the monitoring visit.