A recent report showed Iowa as second in the nation in the percentage of child abusers who are child-care providers, some Ames community members are skeptical about the results because of the varying definitions of child-care providers.

According to the report, 6.2 percent of Iowa’s 8,163 child abusers were those providing child care. Seventy-six percent were baby sitters, 16 percent were at-home day-care providers, and 8 percent were licensed day-care workers.

Iowa’s percentage was second only to Pennsylvania’s 10.8 percent.

The report, which was released April 10 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, also said Iowa’s percentage might be high because Iowa’s statistics included baby sitters and home day-care providers as well as licensed day cares. Other states’ statistics only counted licensed day cares.

Some Ames residents cited that those factors could indicate skewed results.

“A lot of what you hear in the media, at least what I’ve heard about, is from baby sitters, so I feel the statistics could be wrong,” said Sharon Mackey, kindergarten teacher at Formative Years Growing and Learning Center, 4510 Todd Drive.

Jessica Watje, full-time employee at the Ames Community Preschool Center, 611 Clark Ave., and ISU alumna, said she thinks the statistics could be incorrect.

“A lot of people in Iowa watch for things like that and report it where other states may not,” she said.

Diane Luth, assistant scientist in agronomy, sends her two children to ACPC after school. She agreed that people in other states might have differences in what they report because of the varying definitions of what “abuse” is.

However, Luth said parents should be more attentive to who their day-care providers are.

“Parents have the responsibility to not use day care as a drop-off and make an effort to get to know who’s taking care of their kids,” she said. “There are so many different kinds of day-care situations, you need to know and be involved with it. It’s important to know how your child spends their day.”

Watje said she doesn’t think just knowing the child-care providers is enough; more effort should be put into finding people who have educational backgrounds in child care or people who are in the process of getting child-care education.

“They need to have educated people running [the day cares],” she said. “They can’t just pull people off the streets.”

Watje also agreed that parents need to be more involved with the people taking care of their kids. She said if she had kids in day care, she would find out what background the child-care providers have and make unannounced visits.

“I would go in and observe how the people work with the kids,” she said.

Watje said the most effective way to lower the amount of child-abuse cases would be to find ways to keep the experienced day-care workers there.

She said it is very hard to keep experienced people because the amount of money day-care workers make is often not enough for such a significant job.

“I think it’s one of the most important things. We help raise these kids,” she said.

The only real way to get the highest quality day-care workers is to invest more money in the people who work there, Watje said.