There’s nothing more horrific a parent could imagine than the death of a child under any circumstances. But when a child dies under mysterious circumstances while in the care of a person the parents thought they could trust, the pain, shock and grief are exponentially greater.
That’s the case surrounding the 2012 death of Camden Lafkin, then 3 months old. Her parents, Elly and Cameron Lafkin of Harrisonburg, sought out friends’ recommendations for people to provide child care after Elly Lafkin’s maternity leave was over. They settled on a woman who came with high recommendations from friends. The Lafkins did everything experts advise parents to do, including running a private background check on the woman. Nothing came up.
But after barely four weeks in the woman’s care, little Cami was found unresponsive and rushed to a local hospital’s emergency department. After CPR failed, she was declared dead.
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But the shock for the Lafkins was compounded when police arrested the provider and ran her fingerprints through national databases. The results were stunning: She had five known aliases and, under one of the aliases, was on probation for a felony.
Fighting through their grief, the Lafkins took up the cause of reforming state safety rules governing the child care industry. In 2015, the General Assembly passed what came to be known as Cami’s Law, requiring all employees of child care providers undergo full background checks, including fingerprinting.
But one group of providers were exempted from the 2015 law: child care centers associated with a religious institution. Currently, such providers are only required to self-report background check results to the Virginia Department of Social Services. And it’s a name-only check at that.
This year, Sen. Jennifer Wexton, a Loudoun County Democrat, and Del. Robert Orrock Sr., a Caroline County Republican, have introduced legislation that extend the toughened background check rules to religious institutions. The bills have passed both chambers with a good chance of making it to Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s desk for his signature.
But there are vociferous opponents to bills: religious institutions that insist a requirement by the state to require fingerprint checks is a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Exercise clauses. The current self-reporting of the results of a name-only background check, they contend, gives them the choice of whether to run the checks and whether even to report the results to the state. The Wexton and Orrock bills, in their opinion, represent an unconstitutional infringement by the state on the practice of their religion as they see fit. Even Orrock, the sponsor of the legislation in the House of Delegates, is sensitive to this complaint, to the point he’s included a “sunset clause” in the bill to invalidate it if the federal government were to change its regulations.
Hanging over this fight is the $117 million the state’s Child Care Subsidy program receives annually from the federal Child Care and Development Fund. The money helps make day care affordable for low-income parents while they attend college or job development training classes. If states don’t have heightened background check requirements in place for all providers by October 2017, they will be penalized 5 percent of the dollars they receive from Washington. For Virginia, that would mean a cut of almost $6 million for a program that makes daycare possible for more than 38,000 low-income children.
In 2016, there were 275 religiously exempt child care providers in the state, according to the Department of Social Services. All told, they received $5 million in federal subsidy dollars, along with $1.7 million in state money.
Dan Zacharias, who heads the Old Dominion Association of Church Schools, is blunt in the reason for his group’s opposition. “We view this through a religious liberty lens,” he said. “For the state to license any ministry of a church, in our perspective is a violation of the separation of church and state and can lead to other kinds of controls beyond just safety controls.”
Kimberly Taylor of Child Care Aware Virginia, whose own grandchildren are in a church day care, disagrees vehemently: “I want to know his teacher does not have a criminal background. Just because you’re working in a church does not mean you don’t have a criminal background.”
We agree. The government’s not out to quash religion. This is a matter of public safety and protecting children. Enact this legislation.