Ontario implements regulations for daycare safe arrival to prevent fatalities in hot cars.
Everett Smith, affectionately known as “Smiley” for his contagious grin, had a deep fondness for apples and cherished a yellow toy school bus. Tragically, just three weeks before his second birthday in late June 2022, he lost his life in Bancroft, Ont. A family emergency disrupted their usual morning routine, and his mother, caught up in the crisis, unintentionally failed to drop him off at daycare.
In response to this heart-wrenching incident, Ontario is implementing new regulations for child-care operators starting January 1st of the coming year. Licensed home daycares and child-care centers will be required to establish policies outlining the necessary steps to be taken when a child does not arrive as anticipated. The aim is to prevent such rare yet devastating incidents of children being left in hot cars.
Everett’s parents find solace in this measure, recognizing it as a comforting step forward, ensuring that something positive will emerge from the profound tragedy they have endured.
“How it happened absolutely is devastating, but change comes from situations like this,” Everett’s dad, Jason Smith, said in an interview.
“Will it save lives? Definitely.”
While safe arrival systems have been a standard practice in schools, commencing as early as junior kindergarten at the age of three or four, they have not been uniformly implemented in child-care settings, where the children are even younger and more susceptible.
“I had never really thought about it until then,” said Everett’s mom, Diana Smith, who is a teacher.
“But then when people pointed it out … I was like, why do (daycares) not have the same system that we do?”
A study conducted by researchers from the University of Toronto and the Hospital for Sick Children, focusing on incidents of children perishing unattended in hot cars, revealed that, under specific circumstances, forgetting a child in the back seat of a car is a risk that could affect anyone.
The 2019 study highlighted that six children had lost their lives in this manner between 2013 and 2018 in Canada. In the United States, the study pointed out that an average of 37 children succumb to such incidents each year.
In response to these findings, Education Minister Stephen Lecce emphasized that implementing the new rules is a clear and necessary step, given the potential to save even a single life.
“It could happen to good parents who love their children and care deeply about their welfare and so if there’s a step government could take, that reduces risk and that builds confidence that there’s always a safety mechanism in place or a guardrail against these very tragic, these very rare but very real tragedies, then it’s obvious the government needs to act,” he said in an interview.
“From the consultation, I will tell you that those operators (that didn’t already have a system in place) understood totally why they need it and there was widespread support for this.”
To date, the fund has covered expenses for activities such as horse-drawn sleigh rides, play sessions featuring a bubble machine, and a graduation celebration for the class that Everett was a part of at the daycare.
