9.1 Parental Complaint Process

Lead Agencies must maintain a record of substantiated parental complaints against child care providers and make information regarding such complaints available to the public on request. Lead Agencies must also provide a detailed description of the hotline or similar reporting process for parents to submit complaints about child care providers; the process for substantiating complaints; the manner in which the Lead Agency maintains a record of substantiated parental complaints; and ways that the Lead Agency makes information on such parental complaints available to the public on request. Lead Agencies are not required to limit the complaint process to parents. 9.1.1 Parental complaint process a. Describe the Lead Agency’s hotline or similar reporting process through which parents can submit complaints about child care providers, including a link if it is a Web-based process: Parents and other interested parties may file complaints against child care providers, including youth camps, by calling the OEC Licensing Complaint Line at 860-500-4450 (or 800-282-6063) or can download and complete a OEC Complaint Intake Form. This information can be found on the OEC website and the form can be found at https://www.ctoec.org/file-a-complaint/. Complaints may be filed anonymously. Parents and other interested parties may file complaints against child care providers, including youth camps, by calling the OEC Licensing Complaint Line at 860-500-4450 (or 800-282- 6063) or can download and complete a OEC Complaint Intake Form. This information can be found on the OEC website. b. Describe how the parental complaint process ensures broad access to services for families that speak languages other than English: The Office of Early Childhood Division of Licensing has specialists are bilingual Spanish/English and correspond via phone, email and chat. For all other languages, translation services are available. The regulations for family child care homes are available in English and Spanish. Most of the documents required for licensing family child care homes are available in English and Spanish. The informational portions of the website feature a translation button prominent in the upper right corner of each page and offers translation in the eight most common languages used by consumers in Connecticut. c. Describe how the parental complaint process ensures broad access to services for persons with disabilities: All webpages are laid out in a clear and simple format whenever feasible. Although those with some disabilities will not utilize the entire capability of the website, core information is always present on the page in a text readable format. There is minimal use of tables to ensure that screen readers will be able to read pages in the correct order. All buttons and content are rendered as text to ensure that the content is readable and easy to translate. All text is also designed to be scalable within the browser. All pages are also designed to be responsive, to be fully rendered on any device from desktop computers to cell phones at any zoom level. The website uses color pairings, background colors, and font size to optimize visual accessibility. d. For complaints about providers, including CCDF providers and non-CCDF providers, does the Lead Agency have a process and timeline for screening, substantiating, and responding to complaints, including information about whether the process includes monitoring? [x] Yes. If yes, describe: All complaints are filed with OEC by either calling the OEC Licensing complaint line or completing the OEC complaint form. All complaints that allege violations of the licensing regulations/statutes or health & safety requirements are accepted for investigation. Upon intake, an OEC licensing staff, screen and prioritizes as either a Level 0 (involves a death), Level 1 (involves alleged abuse and/or neglect) or Level 2 (all others). Level 0 and Level 1 complaints are assigned to an investigator and initiated the same day. Level 2 complaints are assigned within 24 hours and are initiated within one week. 99% of investigations involve an on-site unannounced visit to the program. Additionally, the investigative process involves conducting interviews, reviewing of records, review of program’s compliance history, etc. The OEC collaborates with the Department of Children and Families if the allegations involve abuse/neglect and collaborates with law enforcement if allegations are criminal in nature. The investigation of complaints is the same for CCDF vs. non-CCDF licensed providers, including license-exempt. [ ] No. e. For substantiated parental complaints, who maintains the record for CCDF and non-CCDF providers? All complaints are tracked in the OEC licensing database, which includes complaints for license-exempt providers. The processes for the investigation of complaints is the same for CCDF and non-CCDF providers. f. Describe how information about substantiated parental complaints is made available to the public; this information can include the consumer education website discussed in subsection 9.2: All citations of complaints substantiated within the past 5 years are posted on the consumer education website along with all publicly disclosable inspection reports and corrective action plans. Interested parties may also request copies of documentation relative