Repeated Title 22 and Health and Safety Code violations can lead to revocation of your child care center or family child care home license. If the Department of Social Services serves you with notice of A Non-Compliance Conference or an Accusation, call license defense attorney Adam Garcia at (916) 596-1018 for a free consultation.

Repeated Title 22 Violations

A history of repeated regulatory violations by a family child care home licensee is a basis for the California Department of Social Services to revoke such a license. While there is no set number of repeated violations that results in revocation, the severity of the violations taken individually and as a whole will be analyzed. Each license applicant is required to read the regulations, and sign a certification that such regulations had been read and understood. Thus each applicant and subsequent licensee has been put on notice and is aware of the potential violations and the repercussions of any such violations. The California Health and Safety Code, Section 1596.885 and Title 22, California Code of Regulations, section 102402(a)(1) both state that the Department may suspend or revoke any license for the violation by the licensee of any rules and regulations that govern family child care homes.

The Case DSS Will Use

The precedent used by the Department of Social Services comes from the decision In re Bailey. This decision involved a licensee who committed three separate violations in a three year period before getting her license revoked. The licensee’s first was a violation of Title 22, section 102417(a), which states that “the licensee shall be present in the home and ensure that children in care are supervised at all times.” The licensee received a Complaint Investigation Report after she left two infants indoors, while she was outside swimming. A few months later, while licensee maintained a “small family day care home license” which has a maximum capacity of four infants or six children, licensee was found to have been taking care of five infants. This violates section 102416.5, which outlines the staffing ratio and capacity. The final violation for the licensee was after she left eight infants and small children for over an hour with an underage, noncertified caretaker. This underage caretaker had left a client’s infant asleep in a dangerous position. It was discovered that this had been happening on a daily basis. This was in violation of section 102423(a)(2), which asserts the personal right that each child is to receive “safe, healthful, and comfortable accommodations, furnishings, and equipment.”

Good Conduct Not Enough

It is important to note that after each of these investigations and reports the Senior Social Worker who filed them declared that the licensee’s facility was clean, orderly and had sufficient amounts of toys and materials. Additionally, the Department took into consideration the reputation of the licensee by some of her clients and their opinions of her. All were positive reflections of her, and highlighted the trouble each of them would have finding a replacement facility. However, the Department stated that because of the serious violations individually and as a whole, her warnings and citations, and then repetition of the same or similar violations, that she had shown an utter disregard for the regulations and the children. While she vowed that similar offenses would not happen, the Department found that it would be not only difficult, but impossible to have any faith that she would comply in the future.