ATTENTION: DO NOT LEAVE YOUR CHILD AT THE DR DAY CARE SMITHFIELD LOCATION. This location should not…read moreeven be considered for child care. How they are still open and "caring" for children is beyond me, and it makes me SICK to my stomach for anybody who leaves their child here every single day. From first hand personal experience, your children are NOT SAFE here! They are not being nurtured AT ALL and they're definitely not being loved and cared for the way you would expect your child to be loved and cared for. Especially for the amount of money you are being charged for child care.
The director and assistant are compulsive, pathological liars. Do not trust them. They will lie to your face about the safety and well being of your children. They lie to dcyf workers investigating complaints made by somebody other than the director herself (so a complaint made by an employee or family member). The male employee is put so high on a pedestal at the Smithfield location that he gets away with abusing children and it's considered "okay" by most employees because they are friends who go out drinking together, even with their administrators.
The employees are "supposedly" mandatory reporters but they are told that they are better off reporting neglect and/or abuse right to the directors rather than to call DCYF on their own (yes, the director Danielle scares her employees into NOT making the call to dcyf) but when the reports are made right to her or her assistant, the allegations are ignored, not taken seriously, or not believed, and of course, swept under the rug.
INFANTS (6 weeks to 1 year) are grabbed by their LIMBS!!!! If they stand in their cribs, the nurturing care takers will grab your babies by the arms, slam them onto their stomachs and yell at them "ENOUGH! GO TO SLEEP!" Once a baby starts being able to wiggle and move around, they're able to bang on the sides of the cribs; the caring and nurturing teacher will grab them by a foot and yank them fast and hard away from the crib side. If a baby is having a hard time falling asleep, or if they typically cry at nap time, they will be forcefully rolled onto their belly and have their backs "patted" aka SMACKED SO HARD its surprising theres never any bruising. If the back smacking doesnt work, theyll literally be left in their crib screaming their head off for the entire two hours (usually more because theyll be the last to get taken out of their crib. Every other child will be removed one at a time and have their diaper changed first). According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (and probably dcyf regulations considering it's a daycare) babies aren't allowed to sleep on their stomachs unless they can roll to that position by themselves but at the Smithfield location, any baby having a hard time settling down is tossed onto their stomachs in hopes that they'll fall asleep quickly so the teacher can go stuff her face with food or wander the hallways or go interrupt other classrooms or go use her cell phone in a bathroom, all while leaving her own classrooms out of ratios for the entire two hour nap time (and theres more than one two hour nap each day)
Parents are made to believe (by the directors) that their kids are safe because of the multiple cameras placed in every classroom, yet administration does absolutely nothing about the wrongful things that are clearly taking place in all of these classrooms.
Children at this location, if they soil their diaper in between one of the four regularly scheduled diaper changes, they will not be changed until one of those scheduled times.
I could go on and on for hours detailing the many reasons a parent should NOT send their child here, or why parents who currently have children here should REMOVE their child from this disgusting place.
And if we're being honest, that infant room is the very first classroom in the building. There's still a long hallway with many more classrooms and horror stories to mention.
TRUST MY WORD: As a parent, if something, ANYTHING, does not feel right, I promise you from the bottom of my heart IT IS NOT RIGHT!