The paperwork, in full, without the reassuring adjectives

Every adult who is ever alone with children — educators, relief staff, kitchen, and the director — is background-checked and fingerprint-cleared before their first shift.

• Oregon requires a Central Background Registry enrolment for anyone working in a licensed child care setting. That includes a criminal history check, a fingerprint-based check, and a child-abuse and neglect registry check.
• Clearance is required before an employee’s first unsupervised contact with a child, not within some grace period afterwards.
• Registry enrolment is renewed on the state’s cycle, and we re-verify every employee’s standing annually as well.
• Volunteers and student teachers are never alone with children and are supervised by a cleared educator at all times.
• We take up references by phone, and we ask the previous employer the question that matters: would you employ this person again in a room with children.

Every educator is a trained mandated reporter and holds current pediatric CPR and first aid. Certification dates are tracked centrally and nobody works past an expiry.

• In Oregon, child care staff are mandatory reporters of suspected child abuse or neglect. Every educator completes mandated-reporter training at induction and refreshes it annually, and knows how to make a report without going through a manager first.
• Pediatric CPR and first aid certification is held by 100% of educators, refreshed on a two-year cycle. At least two currently certified adults are on site whenever a child is.
• Recognising and responding to anaphylaxis, including epinephrine auto-injector administration, is trained annually and practised on a trainer device.
• Safe-sleep practice is trained at induction for every educator, not only infant-room staff, and refreshed annually.
• New educators complete a supervised induction period before being counted in ratio.

Exclusion criteria are written down, applied the same way to every family, and are not a judgement about you.

• Keep your child home, or expect a call to collect, for: a fever of 100.4°F (38°C) or above; vomiting twice or more in 24 hours; diarrhoea that cannot be contained in the toilet or nappy; an undiagnosed rash; suspected conjunctivitis with discharge; head lice until first treatment; or any illness that means they cannot take part in the day.
• Return after a fever requires 24 hours without fever and without fever-reducing medication. Return after vomiting or diarrhoea requires 24 hours clear.
• Reportable communicable diseases are notified to the county health department, and we tell every family in the affected room the same day — what it was, when, and what to watch for. We never name the child.
• A child who becomes unwell here is cared for away from the group by a familiar adult, and you are called immediately rather than at the end of the day.
• Children are not excluded for a runny nose, a mild cough, or teething. Portland in February would otherwise be an empty building.

Every incident is written down and given to you the same day. Bumps included. Especially bumps.

• Any injury, however small, generates a written incident report describing what happened, what we did, and who was supervising. You get a copy at pickup and sign it.
• A head injury, a bite that breaks the skin, or anything needing more than a cold pack means we call you at the time, not at the end of the day.
• Serious injuries, and any incident of the kinds Oregon requires be reported, are notified to the Office of Child Care within the required timeframe. So are we, to you.
• Biting is common in the toddler year. Both families are told; neither child is named to the other.
• We review patterns monthly. If one part of the yard is producing injuries, we change the yard rather than the supervision rota.

Accreditation is voluntary, slow and expensive, and it is a genuinely useful signal about a centre — which is why we are honest about ours.

• NAEYC accreditation is the national early-childhood standard in the United States. It requires a self-study across ten programme standards, a portfolio of evidence, and an unannounced site visit by trained assessors.
• It is not the same thing as a licence. A licence is the legal minimum a centre must meet to operate; accreditation is a substantially higher bar that a centre chooses to be held to.
• Oregon also operates Spark, a voluntary quality rating and improvement system. Its ratings are published.
• The accreditation and rating status shown anywhere on this website is a placeholder for demonstration purposes. Ask any real centre for their certificate and their current status, and check it with the awarding body rather than taking it from a website.

We practise the things we hope never to use, on a schedule, with the children.

• Fire drills monthly. Earthquake drills quarterly. Lockdown procedure practised twice a year, framed for children as a quiet game and never as a threat.
• Evacuation goes to a named assembly point in the park behind the building; if we cannot return, we relocate to a partner site and you are told where by text and by phone.
• We hold 72 hours of water, food, nappies, formula and first-aid supplies for full capacity, rotated on a schedule.
• Emergency contact details are re-confirmed with every family twice a year. Out-of-date numbers are the single most common reason a centre cannot reach a parent.