HOME ALONE AND AT RISK
THE LACK OF AFFORDABLE CHILD-CARE OPTIONS OFTEN CAN LEAVE MANY CHILDREN
Orlando Sentinel

In Sanford, police jailed a woman after her son, who suffers from cerebral palsy, was found home alone and soaked in vomit. In Gainesville, authorities arrested a mother who left her eight children unattended overnight after she got drunk at a barbecue.

Outside of Florida, parents' decisions in recent months to leave their children alone have had deadly results. In Brooklyn, two children, ages 9 and 1, died in an apartment fire -- set by an arsonist -- after their mother went to work even though the baby sitter didn't show up. And in Yazoo City, Miss., five children, ages 1 to 10, perished in an early morning house fire.

Nationwide, more than 3.3 million children younger than 13 are left to care for themselves at least a few hours a week on a regular basis, according to a study that analyzed data from the U.S. Census Bureau. More than 860,000 of those children are ages 6 to 9, according to Child Trends, a nonprofit research organization in Washington, D.C.

Prosecuting parents when something bad happens is difficult because states don't typically set an age when a child is legally considered old enough to stay home alone. Florida has no laws regarding the issue, and the Florida Department of Children & Families does not offer any recommendations or guidelines.

But child advocates say that children regularly left unsupervised or to be cared for by young siblings are at increased risk for accidents and injuries, and for social, behavioral and academic problems.

"Idle hands are the devil's workshop -- that is really true when it comes to children left alone," said Jack Levine, president of Voices for Florida's Children, a Tallahassee-based advocacy organization.

Children have died in fires, suffered accidental poisonings and become victims of sexual predators, said Glenna Osborne, director of the Children's Home Society of Lake & Sumter counties, a nonprofit agency that helps families keep children out of foster care.

"Although it might have seemed the right thing to do at the time, children sometimes wind up dead or in tragic circumstances," she said.

Every year, about 4.5 million children age 14 and younger are injured at home, according to the National SAFE KIDS Campaign, a nonprofit organization that aims to prevent childhood injury. The vast majority of deaths due to those injuries occurs during evening hours when children are most likely to be out of school and unsupervised.

Although recent tragedies can point to neglectful parents, the numbers of children left alone also point to a lack of affordable child-care options, said Sharon Vandivere, a Child Trends research analyst.

Welfare parents face a Catch-22. They can receive child-care assistance only if they're receiving other aid. Once they get on their feet and off welfare rolls, they often lose child-care benefits. Some leave minimum-wage jobs to get back on aid to take advantage of child-care opportunities, said Judy Shelton, a support worker with Healthy Families, a child-abuse and prevention program.

"Why would you give a mom help looking for a job but you won't help a mom who is already working and having trouble paying for child care?" Shelton said. "That makes no sense to me. I don't believe in leaving kids home alone, but you have to feed your child."

In Lake County, those on welfare are stuck on a waiting list as long as two years before getting child-care assistance, Shelton said. With welfare reform, more mothers are working so the waiting list for affordable child-care continues to grow.

Parents caught in a bind often convince themselves their children will be safe at home without them, behind locked doors, Osborne said.

"When parents are financially and personally stressed to the max, their perceptions are often awry," she said. "It makes sense to that parent to leave a 5-year-old in her own home with food, TV, and locked doors rather than leave that child alone in the back seat of a car in the parking lot for several hours while the parent is at work."

Some parents also rationalize allowing an 8-year-old to miss school to care for a younger sibling "because unless the parent goes to work, the entire family may wind up living in the family car or in a homeless shelter," Osborne said.

Child advocates say more companies should provide in-house day care for their employees, even if only for emergency situations. Those provisions also tend to lower employee absenteeism and turnover.

That's a good start, but the solution needs to extend beyond the companies these parents work for, Levine said.

"Parents are desperate for options that may not be available, including full access to after-school programs and services for parents who work odd hours," he said.

Complicating matters is that no one can say for sure just how young is too young to allow children to care for themselves.

"It is difficult to prosecute because of the vagueness in the law," said Randy Means, director of investigations for the State Attorney's Office.

Some counties offer guidelines, according to the National Child Care Information Center at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

The Fairfax County Department of Family Services in Virginia recommends that children younger than 7 never be left alone, and that children 8 to 10 not be left alone more than 1 1/2 hours and never at night. Children 11 and 12 may be left alone for up to three hours but not late at night, the guidelines suggest, and children 13 to 15 may be left unsupervised, but not overnight.

Most child advocates say there's no magic formula.

"We would love not to have to wait until tragedy strikes to intervene," Levine said. "But there is no way to draw a line in a statute that gives parents a clear signal that age X is at risk but age Y is safe. When you boil it down to the basics, you cannot legislate responsible parenting."

So authorities continue making arrests when things go wrong or children are found alone in precarious situations or poor living conditions.

In Tavares, a 30-year-old mother was charged this year with child neglect after police found her two children, ages 3 and 13, home alone and learned from neighbors that the youngest son often ran around by himself near a busy road.

"She pretty much left her kids because she wanted to go out and party," Tavares police officer Amy Willis said, adding that the 13-year-old boy did not have the mind-set to care for his 3-year-old brother, who was found with a wet and sandy diaper.

The 45-year-old Sanford woman whose son was found lying on the floor covered in vomit was charged in September with child neglect with great harm. The boy, 13, was unable to get into his wheelchair without assistance, authorities said. It was unclear how he came to be on the floor.

The Gainesville mother, 34, was arrested last month on child-neglect charges after one of her eight children went to a police station complaining of hunger.

Most county- and agency-issued guidelines include general recommendations, such as considering the maturity of the child, making sure children are comfortable being alone and that they know what to do in an emergency.

"Children mature at different rates, so it is crucial to evaluate your child's individual development, as well as physical capabilities," said Heather Paul, executive director of the National SAFE KIDS Campaign, which recommends that children younger than 12 never be left alone.

Young children and low-income children are two particularly vulnerable groups, Vandivere said.

Low-income children often live in unsafe neighborhoods or miss out on the academic and social enrichment provided by some before- and after-school programs, she said.

And the younger children are, the less mature they typically are, Vandivere said.

"The less prepared they are to handle unexpected problems that may come up," she said.