254: The Comprehensive Guide to Compliance in Early Education! With Lynn Wenger

In this episode, hosts Kate and Carrie chat with compliance expert Lynn Wenger about the importance of compliance in childcare centers. Lynn shares her journey into early education and emphasizes that compliance goes beyond just meeting licensing requirements—it includes safety protocols, brand standards, and operational processes. 

She introduces the "trifecta" of compliance tools: SOPs, checklists, and audits, and highlights the need for thorough staff training. The discussion also touches on creating a culture of compliance and starting with health and safety initiatives.

This episode is packed with practical tips to enhance childcare quality and safety!

The Compliance Alliance - https://ececompliance.com/

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Transcript

Marie 00:00:01  Welcome to child care conversations with Kate and Carrie.

Carrie 00:00:06  Hey, guys. So today we're going to talk about how to keep your compliance up at your center. Because we know that's what licensing cares about. We know that's what parents care about. And from a dollars and cents perspective, we know that's what the insurance company cares about. We have a guest in today named Lynn Wagner. No, I had it right before and now I did it wrong. Winger. Did I do it bad?

Lynn 00:00:34  Lynn got it.

Carrie 00:00:36  And she is all about compliance and let's get into it. So I have to say, I love the reason.

Kate 00:00:44  That Lynn jumped into this field. And so I'm going to take us backwards. So Lynn tell us why compliance. Like why is this a thing anybody ever wants to talk about.

Lynn 00:00:55  Well everybody should want to talk about it because it's actually part of an early education programs unique selling proposition. I was adopted into early education about 2018, and I say adopted because my background is in business, is in systems, is in processes, and I'm a bit of a data nerd.

Lynn 00:01:17  But my thinking is if you can, define it, replicate it, build a process around it, scale it, then you can then pass on best practices. So when I got introduced to early education in 2018, I was working with the Early Learning Coalition in Florida, and my assignment was to work with 160 individual schools on their billing schedules. And my eyes were like eyebrows were pinned up into my hairline, because the things that I was learning about where the best practices are and how might we refine that made me realize I'm on the right bus, but the wrong seat. Fast forward, I started working with, a company, One Place child care. Some of you may have known about them, and this was everyone's got that. And then Covid happened dot dot dot. But I was working with one place child care helping them build their North American operations. Because again I'm a background systems all that other good stuff. And the companies headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand. So we were building and scaling North America, from pretty much ground zero.

Lynn 00:02:28  And but as a business owner, which I have been this is the Compliance Alliance is my third business. And the reason why I decided to stick with compliance is once I got introduced to this idea of checklists and compliance, my lights went on. Compliance is actually a wonderful word. Let's embrace it. It's something that is amazing. Okay, you.

Kate 00:02:51  Know that you are scaring everybody who's listening right now. They're all going, that is not that. That's not a happy word.

Lynn 00:02:58  That's the you know, it's so true because and I apologize to anybody in the IRS, but we tend to think of audits as like my insurance or not my insurance. My, you know, my taxes are going to be audited. And compliance is scary word for most of us. But when you peel back the layers, what you realize is compliance is simply following a set of set of rules, regulations or guidelines and standards that you expect from your team because it affects the outcome. Right? So licensing and regulation is a piece of compliance, but so is brand compliance.

Lynn 00:03:40  So is technology compliance. So is financial compliance. So it's.

Carrie 00:03:46  Attendance compliance. The staff coming in when we want them to the parents dropping their kids off when we want them to not 15 minutes before nap time.

Lynn 00:03:56  I love it. Exactly. And that's all a form of compliance. And when. So one of the things you learn from the Compliance Alliance is we help bring best practices from other industries. Like why are we reinventing the wheel in early education? If we can borrow best practices from other industries like hospitality, like transportation, like health care, there's several that we can borrow from. Why not do that? And if I could give you just one quick example of where that might for that audience member that's going compliance. another way to say compliance are your safety practices, right? We as an industry have yet to adopt a safety pledge that we can use almost universally. You customize it for your particular program. But that's a simple thing that we can do. I have a template that anybody can have.

Lynn 00:04:57  It's a safety pledge to get started. But it basically is. I'm going to be attentive and supervise. I'm going to ensure safety. I'm going to look for hazards. A safety pledge is something that you have your everybody who's involved in your school's sign, and it begins to create that culture of I have a responsibility. And oh, by the way, that falls under the heading of compliance. Simple, easy to do once you have a safety pledge. I'm amazed when I go on early education websites and I'm not seeing that prominent. So let me ask you a question. When parents drop off their children for the first time and they drive away from your center, what's the number one thought that they have?

Carrie 00:05:41  Well, there's probably some guilt. And then there's also the I hope there's still I hope that they're going to be safe and well cared for.

Lynn 00:05:49  Right, right. And although the curriculum is amazing, although the program is beautiful, the building is beautiful. But I'm wondering, you know, there's a safety piece of it that tugs at the parent or the caregivers.

Lynn 00:06:03  Heartstring. What if you could say everybody in that your child is going to interact with has signed a safety pledge? We have it on our website. We have it posted. So I think that's one small step and a takeaway for compliance that we can embrace and not be afraid of other industries. Do it Disney puts. Would you believe that Disney the adventure theme parks the number one of their pillars is safety. Now when you think of Disney, you tend not to think of a core value of safety as the number one, but they say it's as important as the guest experience. So are we any different?

Kate 00:06:40  We shouldn't be. It's when you talk about changing from one industry to the other. As somebody who came from, a business industry into child care because I had kids and who has not kept one foot like I kept one foot in early child care. And that's about it for 30 years, right? Like, there's always, another foot somewhere, including technology. So, you know, whether it's Microsoft or I did a lot of tech in out of school time.

Kate 00:07:08  So I ran school age programs with a very tech focus, and we always had to sign internet safety pledges or, you know, app safety pledges or whatever it was. It didn't matter if we were doing it for, you know, technology companies with three letters or four letters, if they were based in Texas or New York, it didn't really matter what company we were being funded by. That was one of their requirements. And so it was really interesting when you said safety pledge because I immediately went internet Safety Pledge. I've been having youth sign these for literally like since like 2000. So it was like 25 years we've been signing those safety pledges. I love it because it's also a great and I'm all about the marketing piece. And so what a great thing that makes you different than that program down the street that might look or feel similar to yours. Carrie, I can tell you are wanting to say something. I was I'm watching is.

Carrie 00:08:08  Kind of chewing on some of those things because I have a very cynical husband.

Carrie 00:08:13  And so him going, yeah, okay. So somebody signed something. What? How does that show me that it's a safer place. So my brain was processing what my husband would say, 30 years ago when we were looking for looking for programs for our kids. but also that whole thing that they talk about in psychology that if you have affixed your name to something before you do it, you are much less likely to cheat on it than if you sign your name at the end. So signing your name before you do the thing, you're much more likely to follow the rules than if you sign your name after you work that shift with the kids or whatever.

Kate 00:08:57  Okay, so people should be signing marriage certificates before they actually get married. And so after the ceremony.

Carrie 00:09:04  They should be reading over the vows and signing the before they.

Kate 00:09:09  Yes, before the ceremony.

Carrie 00:09:11  Not it's not the certificate, it's the vows. And what are you actually committing to do? but that's one of the things that has increased the number of people who are investing in their 401 K, right? Is that they sign at before they negotiate their benefits.

Carrie 00:09:31  They're like, I will be investing in the 401 K program. And then they're like, cool. Now we can talk about your benefits. They've already made a commitment that they're going to be investing in their future. And then it's just a matter of how invested in my future am I going to be. And so it could be this from a psychology perspective, I can see it being a similar thing where people are like, okay, I'm going to keep them safe. How safe am I going to keep them? Are we going to climb trees, or are we only going to go up the slide? You know that.

Lynn 00:10:04  I love what you said about that because there is, the, the mindset of when you put your name to something, it you're accountable. You know, when you sign a check, you sign a loan, you sign a whatever else it is, you know, a, an enrollment form. I mean, granted, people are going to bend the rules just like those that walk up to the 12 or less items in the grocery store with a cart that may or may not have 12, that, you know, some people are going to want to try to bend those guardrails.

Lynn 00:10:35  But the idea is it's not a one and done. It's part of the culture. Like, let's reinforce what are our top three safe commitments to safety? you know, challenge one another, have some fun with it. but it's I do think it's an opportunity as an industry to put that more foot forward on our websites and our marketing material.

Kate 00:10:54  Well, I just love the fact of even pulling that all the way in, because a lot of times our staff meetings are, well, they're just that they're a meeting, right? They aren't a reminder of why we're there. And if we included things like safety pledges, organizational missions and visions as the beginning of why we're having this meeting, I think that could kind of really pull all that back together. And I could tell Kerry was going to say something.

Carrie 00:11:24  No, I was just like, you know, I also theater background. I don't talk about that very often. But like when she said making talking about the staff meeting in my head went to how boring a lot of them are.

Carrie 00:11:35  And I'm like, oh, can we have them do hands on practice in meetings about, okay, I want you to pretend that you're the one doing an observation. Go into this classroom that is vacant of kids and go do an assessment with the licensing checklist. Yeah. So my brain is all about figuring out, oh, how can we make this hands on right now?

Lynn 00:12:00  Exactly. Let's let's build on that because that's exactly what we encourage. directors and leaders do is with a staff meeting. So let's say you have a less than stellar licensing visit. Has your staff ever seen has your classroom teacher ever seen a licensing report? What is the licensor looking for? now you can also do it on a competitor. If they were in the news or something that you were aware of that happened. Then you can talk about what happened here. What could we have done better or different? It's very much real life.

Kate 00:12:37  okay. I have I'm going to put a pin in that because I love the idea of taking what's in the news and what could we do to make sure that it didn't happen or what maybe would have happened? Because, you know, those who are listening may not be on as many groups as, say, the three of us are probably in to find all the things that are happening and like some of the crazy stories in other states, but that you mean.

Carrie 00:13:04  People don't have Google alerts for police arrested and child care? Is that not a Google alert that everybody has.

Kate 00:13:13  No carry that that that is not a Google alert? Maybe. Maybe you and Lynne like you, Lennon and.

Lynn 00:13:20  I want to hang out with you.

Kate 00:13:23  But I think that it would be a great opportunity if you are a director listening to to do just that, go create a Google alert that is child care and arrested. you could join some if you're not already following state associations, follow some state associations or national associations, even if it's in the state next to you, because maybe you don't really want to know if somebody's screwing up in your own state. if they really screw up bad, it makes national news anyway. So. And some of that's happened a few weeks before.

Carrie 00:14:00  I have so many of those stored in my little brain.

Kate 00:14:03  Yes. and so maybe, maybe, maybe that's Lynn's next book. Right. So we've we've got a we'll make Lynn write. One of you won't believe it if and,

Lynn 00:14:14  Maybe you're really.

Lynn 00:14:15  You're raising the bar. I'm not a published author, unlike you both. With, what, eight books now and counting. So I might have to do that. Maybe you'll give me some pointers along the way.

Kate 00:14:25  Absolutely. We will. We will be happy to do that. But before we go down that rabbit hole, because I will write it this weekend. And,

Carrie 00:14:33  She's bad. She's written rough drafts on a weekend because we were talking about a book that should exist. Messed up the whole schedule for the year. Definitely messed up the whole schedule for the year, but that's good.

Kate 00:14:50  I'm not sorry, but I did. All right, so we've got folks we're telling folks to go go find these horror stories. Talk through in your staff meeting, what you could have done to make it not happen in your program. I love that. I love the the empty checklist or the empty checklist, the checklist in the empty classroom during a staff meeting. What else would be some great things?

Carrie 00:15:14  It doesn't have to be a horror story cane.

Carrie 00:15:16  It can just be. This is a bad this is a suboptimal thing that happened. You know, it doesn't have to be horror.

Kate 00:15:26  I mean, we could probably pull up, you know, the the license. I mean, most states licensing reports are public domain. So you could go find somebody. I'm going to go with a couple of towns over and go search through, you know, other reports.

Lynn 00:15:41  Well. And I think to put the positive spin on it, you can also highlight like here's a best practice that is worth replicating and this is why they receive this award, or this is why they're being recognized. So it's an opportunity. Again, if you can replicate it, duplicate it, scale it. we want to understand that. So this makes me think of something else that maybe we want to unpack the difference between best practice and best intention. So I'm actually in the process of writing something about this, because best practice is what we all want, but it tends to slip into best intention.

Lynn 00:16:23  I intended to do that, but other things took priority. and again, data nerd here. But when I looked at the 20, 24, 25, well, it's 24 and 25. The benchmark study about compliance in 23, 59% put it as a high priority. 24 put it 71% at judge jumped 12 points in one year. So and it was the highest one of the category of what people are challenged with. So it made me go, where's the challenge? and the reality is it's enrollment. It's retaining staff, attracting and retaining staff. It's revenue generating things. But when does compliance become the number one priority? Most often when there's been an incident, a claim your insurance is up for renewal or on. Let's talk positive on the side where you're saying, I now want to grow. So I'm acquiring a school and I want to look at what their compliance practices are, their licensing history there. are there is there anything in the news I need to know about them? Or the last scenario might be when you're exiting, when you exit, your compliance practices have a direct correlation to the value of your business.

Lynn 00:17:45  And I know this from working with private equity. They do something called due diligence for the audience who may not know this, but the due diligence is where they get it. They get into every nook and cranny about your licensing history because it is public record. You're right. So parents can find out about it another. So I really push the idea of best practice versus best intention. It tends to slip to best intention. And sometimes you can't control that. There's other things that clearly are a higher priority, but we got to try to stay prepared and pick away at the areas that might have the greatest impact and or liability if it's not addressed.

Kate 00:18:24  Absolutely.

Carrie 00:18:25  I mean, I think that again, how do we keep our staff on the staying in compliance with this is the procedures that we have at our program. And this is one of the things that the medical community generally has child care completely beat on, and they will wash their hands 500 times until they washed it the right way. Every time their supervisor watched them wash their hands and they're like, no, no, no, go back.

Carrie 00:18:59  You need to do it 100 times today before I do my next assessment. And so that whole you've got to have it like in your body as an automatic response. I think the medical community does that pretty well. And if somebody is the opener, going through the whole opening procedure at your facility correctly should be in their bones because they've been opening for at least three weeks. And so it shouldn't be. Oh, I forgot to put the safety plug back in the outlet after I vacuumed. Because it's just in your DNA. You do it every time. And so before their first day, they do it unsupervised. They plug in and unplug the vacuum and put the plug the cover ten times before they can actually vacuum that kind of thing, which seems, on the surface, ridiculous, except that you don't have to think about the right procedure to brush your teeth because you've done it so many times.

Kate 00:20:02  Yes.

Carrie 00:20:03  Yeah, and the more we can get into that brushing your teeth kind of routine, the easier it is to operate your school, and the more duplicative it is so that you can expand your program into another classroom or another shift or another building repeatable process.

Kate 00:20:20  Yeah. So that's something that I was thinking, and I'm sure, Lynn, you've got some great tips related to onboarding. So, you know, you did bring up one of my favorite companies. And they do have, you know, probably the world's best and longest onboarding process earlier when you were talking about Disney. So when people are thinking compliance and they're also thinking about staff turnover and new staff and training those new staff. What might be some suggestions that you might have for a director who maybe notices a trend that it's their New Year employees who might have some of the the those licensing ticks or dings versus maybe folks who've been there for a while. Any suggestions on what they should be looking at when they're talking compliance during, you know, that onboarding orientation phase, that should be several weeks and not a day.

Lynn 00:21:14  Yeah, this is true. well, it's it's partially the tools and the support that you give during the onboarding. So you can tell them, but then it's also the practice. It's the tools.

Lynn 00:21:26  So in in an ideal world we call it the trifecta. Like if I had this in every school I'd be like thrilled. And it's the three things are standard operating procedures checklists, Lists audits. So if during the onboarding it's like here's the standard operating procedure for diapering. Here's the standard operating procedure for going, from the classroom to the playground. Here's a, playground safety, checklist. But if you have your SOPs, your checklists, and this gets to the point of, you know, you want them to be the unconscious competent, they're just automatically doing it. But in the beginning, they're going to be the conscious incompetent. They're like, oh, did I do that right? And is that and then they grow into just being unconsciously competent at what they're doing. Having said that, the danger of a checklist is the you know, if you've ever been into a restroom at a gas station and you look at the cleaning checklist, somebody just pencil went and they said, yep, done. Whether or not it really was.

Lynn 00:22:33  So checklists have a role. But then if you add to that the audits somebody needs to be auditing not to look for the gotchas, but to say, hey, you did this really, really well and here's an area for an improvement. And if they're struggling with it, somebody else is probably struggling with it too. And you bring that back to the staff meeting. If you have cameras, you can have some footage to say, let's diagnose this. You know, we're going to do this together. there's so many ways that you can incorporate compliance into it, but that in the ideal world, you have standard operating procedure that is a living document, not just a piece of paper that gets stuffed into a notebook or a binder. So these checklist and audits are best. That's truly best practice.

Kate 00:23:19  So what might be. So a lot of the folks have heard us over episodes definitely preach the first two. I don't think we've ever brought up audit as that term. I think we talk about going back and checking and making sure that people are doing it right.

Kate 00:23:34  So if you know, somebody immediately went IRS when you said audit and therefore they stopped listening.

Lynn 00:23:42  Don't stop listening.

Carrie 00:23:45  You can use the child care word evaluate, right. Because we're doing evaluation kids all the time. If the word audit scares you, replace it with evaluate.

Lynn 00:23:55  Yes, that's a good mindset. But remember part of our mission is to get us comfortable talking about compliance and audits and the language that and risk management. We haven't even talked about that, which is probably a topic for another time.

Kate 00:24:07  As I say, that's a whole other episode. That's a.

Marie 00:24:09  Whole.

Lynn 00:24:10  Nother episode. But, so yeah, ask your question. I took us probably in the wrong direction. Do you want me to talk about what that might look like at audits.

Kate 00:24:18  Or what might be a way for somebody to get started? So if you're, you know, is there one area or one tool or that they can start with?

Lynn 00:24:27  Yeah. I mean, the the thing about best practice and continuous improvement is it's never done.

Lynn 00:24:34  If we can all agree that it's never done and you're always adding and learning, and we have a great community that likes to share. So if I were to say the the place to start is around the health and safety, you know, the the in the classroom, you're looking for hazards, you're looking for, anything that could pose a potential harm to a child, whether it's a tripping hazard, something that could be pulled down, something that's a choking hazard, something. So there are checklists. We have checklists that we provide. but you want to start with like classroom health and safety. Another one would be your, playground safety. All the things that you're looking for. Can the little person get through any part of your secure area? Because that leads to active supervision. And you know, when they if they can get through, they will. are there hazards? So those are two checklists right, right out of the gate. that I would say also medication management and food allergies checklists around those two areas.

Lynn 00:25:39  So when I look at, where to get started, it's the areas that could have the greatest potential of risk or harm to a child. And if you kind of think that backwards and reverse engineer that, the teachers are probably going to be able to come up with some great areas where, wow, I didn't know they would do that. And but they did. And, you know, let's make sure that we check that on a, on a more regular basis now that we know that.

Kate 00:26:05  Absolutely. Well, Lynn, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to have a conversation with us. And hopefully folks stayed all the way through the end, because I really think that, you know, sometimes the golden nuggets are always at the end, and we hope that folks will come and find you and all the great resources and options and programs that you guys have on the Compliance Alliance. I said that correctly. Right. Like it's all three words, right? Okay. And you know, how can they find you if they wanted to connect with you.

Lynn 00:26:37  So they can look for Lynn Wenger. And I'm on Facebook. I'm on LinkedIn. The Compliance Alliance is also on Facebook and LinkedIn. you can go to our website ww e compliance.com and follow us there. There's tons of free resources. you know, like compliance, job responsibilities, that pledge. You can find those in the compliance corner and we're constantly updating that. And you'll also see me on occasion at shows. I'm going to see the two of you in May in Rhode Island. So we're actually.

Kate 00:27:16  Yes.

Carrie 00:27:17  That'll be great. Forward to that one.

Kate 00:27:20  Yes.

Carrie 00:27:21  Not that I don't look forward to the other conferences, but because it's being put on by a friend and has that special place.

Lynn 00:27:29  Agreed? Agreed. I'm. I'm in the same boat. Noel, is somebody that I'm connected to. And is Noel. Your connection? Erica or.

Kate 00:27:37  Erica?

Lynn 00:27:38  Okay, great.

Kate 00:27:42  Well, we are so excited and hopefully folks will check out our show notes. In the show notes, there will be links to, Lynn's website, Lynn's social media handles, and we might even go find a a checklist or two that we specifically liked or that maybe we talked about.

Kate 00:28:00  We'll include those in the show notes as well. With that, Carrie, what do you want to say.

Carrie 00:28:05  If you learned something from the show? Share it with someone else who needs to know and make sure you are following or subscribe, depending upon your podcast provider, and we will talk to you next week.

Marie 00:28:17  Thank you for listening to Child Care Conversations with Kate and Carrie. Want to learn more? Check out our website at Texas Director. And if you've learned anything today. Leave us a comment below and share the show.