Our family has been involved in an incident where a teacher hit a child...for the second time now. After involving state authorities (i.e., police, OCFS and CPS) who assess these situations, we've learned that children have little to no rights or protections.

Imagine this: Your child describes in detail the incident which occurred, even gesturing it out, and the response received from CPS is "kids say a lot of things" or that you as a parent could have coerced them to do that. You're told from OCFS (who investigates against the regulations) that there needs to be evidence to substantiate a case; yet, there is no regulation in place requiring child care facilities to take accountability, monitor their faculty, and ensure a safe environment for our children through the use of cameras. An individual comes forward with knowledge that the same teacher has previously admitted to slapping a child within the classroom, yet the child care facility continues to allow the teacher to work there. How many children have been assaulted over the years (??!!!) - due to the "lack of evidence" no cases have been substantiated, and only substantiated cases are captured within the background checks performed on child care workers. The list goes on....

With this petition, our goal is to raise awareness to NYS Senators regarding the lack of protection for our children and to motivate them to mandate all licensed child care facilities to be equipped with cameras to ensure all children are protected, to ensure that facilities have monitoring over their faculty and accountability can be taken for any wrongdoing, to ensure that cameras are backed up and cannot be tampered with, and most importantly, should an incident of negligence or abuse ever occur, to ensure the facility can provide evidence (i.e., video and audio recordings) to all authorities depicting the specific incident.

By signing this petition, you are indicating that you want to protect children, especially those whom may be non-verbal or unable to communicate. By signing this petition, you are indicating that you are against child abuse and negligence.

If we win, this is a huge step in protecting children. If we lose, well, we don't want to even think about all the wrongdoing that will continue to happen...

Let’s advocate together, be a voice for the voiceless, and make a positive impact.