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NORTH PINE BLUFF DAYCARE HAMMERED WITH MORE THAN 12 HEALTH VIOLATIONS

By AmyJo Brown/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Friday, March 7, 2008 7:43 PM CST

Roaches, piles of trash and blocked exit doors were some of more than a dozen state Department of Health violations an inspector noted Thursday at a north Pine Bluff daycare center.

“That’s not what we like to see, and I’m sure that’s not what a good business owner would like reported,” said Ed Barham, a spokesman for the state Department of Health.

The center, Precious Memories Too, located at 6022 Sheridan Road, is certified by the state to have up to 36 children in its building, and was opened in February 2007.

An inspector who visited early Thursday morning found the bathroom lacked paper towels and hand soap, that the food surfaces in the kitchen were dirty and that roaches were in the kitchen along with four “large bags of stinky trash,” she wrote in her food establishment assessment report.

The inspector, contacted Friday, declined to comment.

Barham said the inspection is only a snapshot of the center’s operations, and that it may be an isolated incident. He said the center was inspected when it opened and in December.

“These things weren’t going on then,” he said.

Debra Hughes, the director of the center, said on Friday that she had already corrected the violations noted. She said she worked with the Pine Bluff Fire Department and had removed the toys and play pen blocking exit doors. She also said the center had been cleaned, and that a pest control company was scheduled to visit the center next week.

“This was an unusual situation,” Hughes said. “A lot of (the violations) should not have been written.”

Hughes said she was not at the center when the inspection took place. She said a manager who was there at the time did not tell the inspector where, for instance, extra soap and paper towels were for the bathroom. As for the trash left in the kitchen, Hughes said, the inspection occurred first thing when the center opened, and that cleaning from the day before had not been completed.

“A lot of the violations were correctable right there,” she said.

The inspection by the health department Thursday was a routine inspection, according to the report.

Barham said daycare centers are inspected twice a year, once between January and June and once again between June and December. They are unannounced visits.

The department has scheduled a follow up inspection at Precious Memories Too in April.

Barham said the violations found at the center Thursday did not meet a level that required its closure, which the department does only in rare instances. In those cases, he said, centers are typically found to consistently have problems and present an imminent health threat.

Hughes also runs Precious Memories Child Care at 6214 Dollarway Road, which has been open since 2003. Inspection records for that facility were not immediately available because department of health offices closed early Friday.

Hughes said this was the first time she has had these kind of violations.

“All of the violations she printed have been corrected,” she said.

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