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I am curious how telling parents they have to pay for the service that the providers are making money off of is going to go.
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Ummm isn't that what I said. They are useful AFTER an incident is discovered.Originally posted by Small Batch View Post
I actually was hired to watch two centers video cameras. That was my primary job for the centers. I had a jumbotron monitor and had just color video feed. I KNOW what watching cameras means. Do you know anyone in the country who has the job of watching daycare cameras? I had three decades of child care experience behind me and I had to teach myself to interpret what I was seeing so I could PREVENT accidents and abuse. Even with the staff KNOWING I was watching they worked their way around many things until I figured it out. I had the ability to call directly into the room and speak to them LIVE as it was happening... they still tried to beat the system.
They would go into closets with nothing in their hands and come out with nothing in their hands (talk on their cell phones they smuggled in their bras)
They would position the babies with the babies back to the cameras when they were feeding them.
They would rearrange the furniture in the room to block the view and then have their backs to the camera.
They would go to the wall right underneath the camera out of view. They would look at their room on camera and instantly see the blind spots... I would see them coming in and out of the blind spots.
They would FALL ASLEEP during nap time....
and on and on even though they knew they were being watched WITH a dedicated camera watcher. Of course we corrected things as they happened. We made them put the furniture in a position where I could see the best. We timed how long infants were in equipment and made calls to MAKE them take the infants who fell asleep in equipment out and put them to bed.
It was a work in progress every day... People don't just do the right thing because there are cameras. They learn in a couple of weeks how to beat them if they want to.
The ones who were corrected and didn't like the intrusion of being on camera and watched LEFT to go to a center where they just had cameras but no one watching or no cameras at all.
You said "But people tend to behave differently if they think they are being observed. And there truly are a lot of studies showing this. It's referred to as the observer effect or Hawthorne effect."
Hawthorne this... just a small sampling... All of these workers knew they were in rooms with cameras. Pay attention to the worker in the first one really closely. Some of these cases the workers were employees for YEARS and on camera. Some months... but the truth is that the workers get used to the cameras very quickly and they know how to work around them or they know they have a low likelihood of the video ever being watched.
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Not to be unkind, but I do not have an interest in your company or product. I don't know what you mean by "get it." I get the value of surveillance systems and I get the value of making a buck. Other than that, I am not sure what you mean. Best of luck to you though.Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
What you wrote seems contradictory, even from one sentence to the next. But I tried to interpret it charitably.Originally posted by nannyde View Post
You wrote:
Why would cameras be both useless unless someone is monitoring them in real-time, and only useful later on after something has happened? Are they only useful in real-time, or are they only useful later on?Originally posted by nannyde View Post
And, how might they be both useful only after an incident, and be nothing more than parent-pleasers? Are they useful at all, or are they not?
So you're saying that they did indeed change their behavior because they knew they were being watched.Originally posted by nannyde View Post
Had they thought they were not being watched (or forgot that they were), they would not have sneaked into closets or rearranged furniture, or otherwise deliberately placed themselves in blind spots.
They were thinking, "I cannot do this here, because I am being watched. But if I could find a way to not be watched, then I can do this."
I didn't say they would. I said their behavior tends to change when they know they are being observed. If they don't know about the camera, then they believe they are not being observed, and their behavior will not change. If they know about the camera but believe no one will ever look at the footage, then they believe they aren't being observed, and their behavior will not change.Originally posted by nannyde View Post
And the ones who were corrected and didn't leave? Either you fired them, or you allowed them to continue doing prohibited things.... or they changed their behavior because they knew they were being watched.Originally posted by nannyde View Post
If they think that they will not appear on the video or that the video will not be watched, then they think they are not being observed, and so they will not change their behavior. They have to think they are being observed. It's not about the camera. It's about the observation... which is something for which a camera may be useful.Originally posted by nannyde View Post
Lastly, those links you provided all underscore the value of cameras in a daycare. It sickens me to watch them, but I am at least glad there was clear evidence available showing what exactly happened to those children. Young children are typically unable to clearly explain what happened to them, if they are able to explain anything at all. At least those kids had those videos to speak for them.Comment
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I will be back
Thank you all for your comments, but I am going to take a break until I have more to say about my program. I get that most of you will be against it, that is okay, it is not meant for everybody. I am sure you all run great daycares, but everything can always be made better, safer and that goes for provider as well as the child and their families.
Ultimately the market will tell me if it was a good or bad idea, but based on the families that come to my daycare, it has been nothing but a complete success for me. I hope that once we do actively start to promote the business, you can all look at it with an open mind. Until then, I get how much you are all opposed to the idea, so no need to keep harping on it.
Thank you all again for your feedback, I got exactly what I wanted from this conversation.
Have a great day.Comment
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I just put in a ten hour day so this may be a bit tangential but here goes...Originally posted by Small Batch View Post
What I meant to say... and you are absolutely right... is that cameras don't deter BAD behavior. I guess I assumed it was bad behavior that the parents were concerned about when hiring a child care with cameras.
So having cameras on the employees isn't going to make a difference unless they know they are actually being watched, the observer understands what they are seeing, and the behavior is corrected. The ones who don't want to be corrected move on.
It really is the same concept as casino cameras. Having cameras doesn't deter ALL of the bad behavior but it does correct some of it by both employees and patrons. The big difference is that casino cameras are watched by trained camera watchers who UNDERSTAND the business of gambling.
All of the links above are about center cameras where the employees knew they were on camera. In order to commit these acts of aggression or negligence they HAD to have had many many times when they got away with it while being on camera before it was actually caught.
People escalate their behavior when they are getting by with it at the lower level. They get trickier to beat the system. They are only comfortable with the serious behavior you see in the videos after having gotten away with the smaller then escalating behaviors.
I'm prolly one of the few people in the US who has been hired to watch center cameras. I can tell you that just having a video feed made it extremely difficult to tell what was going on and extremely easy for the staff to beat the system. I'm very experienced in child care and I eventually got really good at it but I had to teach myself what I was seeing and do A TON of intervention to get around their get arounds.
Cameras are pretty good for after the fact BUT the problem is the amount of staff time it takes to go through camera footage to disprove or prove an incident. It is EXTREMELY expensive in staff time.
We had a kid go home and tell them a "teacher" had pulled them by the arm that day. We had to go back through every day the teacher was in the room with the kid WITH the parents to show them that the teacher didn't pull the kids arm and actually had next to nothing to do with the kid. Then we went through the footage from the room to see if any OTHER adult did it. We validated that the child nor the accused were off of camera at the same time in the blind spots or adjoining storage rooms. It took a ton of time to disprove something an older child accused an adult of.
We had to watch the footage of the hallway, playground, gym, and room to prove that the child hadn't been mishandled in any way. We proved it to the parents but it cost more than the tuition they paid for many weeks.
After the fact gets really expensive to the point where we had to start charging a fee for the service. If the parent accusation was correct the fee was not due. If the parents accusation was not correct, they paid the staff time to review. It was the only way we could afford to prove or disprove (more expensive) that xyz did or didn't happen.
I think we may be thinking the same thing ... possibly. Having cameras does change behavior but it can be for good or evil.
Anywho... back to the original concept of home child care cameras and the business idea. I think it's a very shaky proposition. There are so few cases of child abuse and neglect in home daycare comparatively. Having a middle man in between you, the cameras, and the parents is a BAD plan IMHO. Cameras are cheap and if someone really wants to offer that as a service they can do what the op did and just do it themselves especially if there is a buck to be made once the equipment is paid off.
There are so many problems with it in a home setting, I just can't see it being something an average provider would allow. I wouldn't allow my own kid on a video feed in my home. I wouldn't allow my daycare parents to watch the other kids. I wouldn't trust parents that they wouldn't give the ability to watch the video to people they trust. I wouldn't trust that they wouldn't use captured video and post it on social media. The good... the bad... the usual... all of it.
Without sound it is extremely difficult to tell what is actually going on in a daycare. I wouldn't trust a newbie parent to have the skill set to be able to navigate what they are seeing with the exception of things like the amount of time a kid was in a bouncer, their kid playing with this or that, times that this or that was done etc. They may be able to count kids.
They wouldn't be able to tell if I was kind or mean. They wouldn't be able to tell if I was rough or gentle. They wouldn't know what went on at the changing diaper sites or bathrooms. For example, potty training is a VERY high time of abuse to children by parents and providers alike. That wouldn't be on camera for obvious reasons.
When I camera watched we always knew what parents were watching. They sent their kid in horizontal striped clothes or neon clothes that reflected on the camera. The infant parents would send them in the same outfit every day. That way they could pick their kid out of the others in the room.
We did some analysis of viewing and found that most parents watched quite a bit the first two weeks and then dropped to rarely ever watching it. There were always ones who had it on all the time (work from home types) and they were usually the ones calling in when Snowflake looked like she had been crying but couldn't really tell.
This was back in the early 2010 time so technology is way better and cheaper now. I think it would be a very different ball game now just six years later. I honestly can't IMAGINE having to deal with parents who are watching single fixed cameras without audio now. ugh... it would be awful.
Now should sound ever be included... (and I never suggested sound absent video... that would be worse) then parents could pretty easily tell what was going on. Until the legalities of that gets worked out state by state and the punishments for abuse of that by parents gets established... it's just not that great of a tool of deterrence of bad behavior. It IS better than nothing for the parents but a big pain in the rear for the owners of the centers.
Home day care... well I don't see that as ever being a well accepted service by the owners. If the state steps in and requires it then it may happen but until home providers are forced to do it... I don't see it being too common. The ability to offer it has been around for maybe eight or so years and I haven't heard too much about home providers offering it for viewing for the parents. Many have it for themselves now because it's so cheap but I would GUESS maybe five percent or so offer it to the parents to view. That's just a guess.Comment
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Good or bad, as it relates to this issue, is basically dependent on one's point of view. What matters is the observee's awareness of the observer's expectations. The person being watched may not believe their actions to be bad, but that doesn't mean they don't recognize that those actions are not wanted by the person observing them.Originally posted by nannyde View Post
Right. As I stated earlier, it's not about the camera, it's about the knowledge that they are being observed by someone else.Originally posted by nannyde View Post
This problem should roughly scale itself. A smaller daycare is going to have fewer children, lowering the probability of a complaint. They'll also have fewer cameras, lowering the amount of footage that must be reviewed.Originally posted by nannyde View Post
My guess would be that they wanted a little bit more assurance that they had selected a good daycare, or reassurance that putting their kid in daycare was the right thing to do.Originally posted by nannyde View PostComment
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I have them...
I have several cameras in my daycare and they all record. I have three inside the house and three outside. I do not allow the parents access to the cameras on a daily basis, but I do record all activities to cover myself on a business aspect as well as a provider.
While I don't think it's necessary, I had a background in law, and it's just that part of me why I do it. I do feel, however, that it gives the parents a little reassurance knowing that I'm confident enough in what I do and that I'm not afraid of what I do to record the activities and provide them, if requested, to the parents. I recently had a child who I had to terminate from my daycare because of his continued violence toward my kids and the other child here. While I would tell the child's parents of his actions, my concerns, and my efforts at helping this child; the stories were always turned around by the child itself making it sound like it wasn't the child's fault. Upon termination, the parents indicated to me that their child was taken advantage of and my decision for termination was, how would you say, without merit. I then pulled the camera information out and the parents were literally left speechless.
Please don't get me wrong, that's not at all my intent with the cameras, but I think it not only helped me, but hopefully helped the parents understand that "real" issue or problem at hand.
Please note though...cameras are expensive, and the cost for recording can be equally expensive.!.
Originally posted by Unregistered View PostComment
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I have pretty much the same set up.Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
I have more than 3 inside and more than 3 outside.
I have them basically for the same reason.
I stop at parent access though.
I would NEVER allow parents access to video.
I don't believe they have a right to another child's privacy.
I don't feel parents are qualified to interpret a snippet of footage and acurately understand.
Licensing and/or the law can view footage any time my practices or actions threaten a child's, a familiy's or my own safety.Comment
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And they are most welcome to go to another daycare. I had one parent suggest putting in a camera that she can see her child via an app. My answer to her was "No!" She still decided to sign a contract with me and leave her child in my care in fact she was on a list for a Government daycare with cameras and she decided to stay with me. It's either the parents feel comfortable or trust you or they don't. If they don't its just not a good fit and its best to part ways.Originally posted by Unregistered View PostComment
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This really sums it up. If a parent does not have trust in the provider, they need to go elsewhere. This business is BASED on trust. That's why parents must shop around. Why they should ask plenty of questions and get references BEFORE they sign up. Why would anyone leave their child in a place they aren't sure about??????Originally posted by Kayschildcare View PostComment
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Can't these cameras be hacked pretty easily? I would think being a daycare that advertises access via a camera link would make someone a particular target for some pretty shady types. I just don't think I'd want the liability, not to mention the uncertainty of who might be watching at any time.Comment
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Because trust isn't simply black and white, yes or no.Originally posted by Meeko View Post
Because your level trust has absolutely no bearing on whether or not your child will be harmed.
Because thousands of families every year have their trust betrayed, and without some sort of witness there may be no knowledge of the abuse, nor recourse.
Anything is conceivably hackable. Like your cell phone, your wifi, your computer, your iCloud or Dropbox account, your Fb account, your bank account, Target's credit card terminals, CIA and NSA servers...Originally posted by MyAngels View Post
How do you define "easily?"Comment
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Cameras
You can have a small camera set up for pretty cheap.The price has come down. You don’t have to make it one where they can view it on-line. Just have a recorder that records the day with a hard-drive that keeps it for a week or do. It gives them the comfort of just knowing you have a recording if they want to view it. I have a large center for 30 years and we have had cameras for about 10 years. It creates a level of trust for our parents and very few times have they wanted to view the recording. I would never make take it on-line. That does open a can of worms. I tell them it can be hacked and I am not going to take that step. They trust us because the recording is there if they want to see how their child got that bump. Works for us!Comment
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"if they want to view it"Originally posted by Unregistered View Post
NOPE! No way would I allow a parent to view camera footage unless it was of their child alone with no other children, staff or parents visible or audible in the recording......Parents have NO RIGHT to listen to, over hear or view another person's child.
"they trust us because the recording is there"
No they don't. They are showing you they don't trust you because they NEED the cameras/recording.
If they truly trusted you, they wouldn't need the camera footage to back up what you say/do.
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