December 12th, 2017
Septic systems serving home child cares are at a high risk of failing, thereby creating an eminent public health hazard. The Partners in Child Care (PiCC) staff of the Snohomish Health District (SHD) in Everett, Washington developed a project designed to minimize raw sewage exposure to children enrolled in home child cares. In addition to better protecting local child care children from the health hazards of raw sewage exposure, the project also delivers an established foundation for statewide consistency in how local public health departments and the state child care licensing agency may manage child cares served by septic systems. There are approximately 1,000 licensed child cares in Snohomish County caring for about 17,000 children. Of these licensed child cares, roughly 220 are home child cares served by septic systems. The PiCC staff identified that most of these septic systems were either failing, near failing, or positioned to fail within the next several years due to lack of proper system maintenance and insufficient education of the homeowner. The PiCC staff believed that if they could devise a method to identify and track these systems, then provide septic system education and consultation to the homeowners, the number of system failures would be reduced. Likewise, the number of people exposed to raw sewage at the home child cares would be decreased. In 2005, the PiCC staff developed an identification, tracking, education, and consultation project focused on home child cares served by septic systems. The project began to progressively minimize the septic failures of local home child cares. It also provided positive communication and education for care providers to minimize future failures.Additionally, and just as significant, the project established communication between the Washington State Department of Health, the Washington State Division of Child Care and Early Learning, and local health jurisdictions aspiring to begin work on this public health issue.