Lincoln day care on probation for leaving 1-year-old alone outside

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – A Lincoln day care is on probation after a 1-year-old was left unattended on an outdoor playground for more than half an hour.

Elizabeth Rock said she received a scary call about her daughter on Nov. 16.

Her daughter was left outside at Bubbles and Blocks at 48th Street and Pioneers Boulevard.

“They brought the other kids inside, realized she was gone, and went back out to get her,” Rock said.

Rock said it was hard to watch the security footage.

“At some point, she starts to cry,” she said. “Eventually, she just lays down and tries to go to sleep.”

The girl was alone on the playground for 38 minutes.

One of the owners of the day care, Cory Quimby, said he got a phone call from the center’s director immediately after it happened.

“It’s not an incident we want to happen,” Quimby said. “We try and prevent things like this. But with 450 kids and 150 employees, sometimes there’s just human error and accidents.”

Bubbles and Blocks self-reported the incident to the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services.

After an investigation, it was placed on a six-month probation that will last until September.

Quimby wants parents to know that this was a one-time mistake and that they’re learning from it.

“It happened. We owned it, we self-reported it,” he said. “We never tried to run from it or hide from it. There’s an opportunity to get better, and that’s the only thing we can do with it.”

The day care has started a new protocol. Two people will separately walk through the playground area to check that no child was left behind.

While her daughter was OK, Rock said things could have ended much worse.

She took her daughter out of Bubbles and Blocks but said she has “trust issues” with other day cares now, too.

“The people who are watching children have a really important job,” Rock said. “And I think it’s been a good reminder for people who work in child care at any center that what they do is really important and shouldn’t be taken lightly.”