Mother Frustrated After She Says Daycare Left Her Son Unattended In Van

A mother wants more to be done after she said her four-year-old son was left alone in a van at his daycare in Catoosa for more than an hour.

Public documents on the Oklahoma DHS website show they itemized what happened, substantiated the claims and made suggestions for corrections.

However, Holley Branom said she's frustrated and what they did isn't enough.

Scooter's parents said he was left alone in a van for an hour and a half at Greenbrier Learning Center Two in Catoosa.

His dad said everyone looked confused when he came to pick up his son.

"One of the teachers sticks her head out the class and she's like, 'they can't find your kid,'" said Chris Neill, Father. "You just automatically think that we pay for our kid to go to school here. They’re going to take care of him. They’re not going to leave him in a van."

Chris said they searched in and around the building until they found Scooter in a van, crying in his Halloween costume.

News On 6's Ashlyn Brothers reached out to get the daycare's side by Facebook messaging them twice, sending them two emails and calling four times. The daycare did not want to comment.

We showed Branom the documents and she verified it was the incident she reported.

The DHS report said the complaint was received on October 31, 2022.

The report said a child was left alone in a vehicle, it wasn't reported to licensing, the director did not believe it was her responsibility to report serious incidents to licensing, accurate attendance was not documented for children leaving the vehicle, a child check was not completed for each trip taken in the vehicle, and attendance records do not show time in and out for each child.

"Had it been any longer, or the temperature be hotter or like a lot colder we would have been burying our son," said Branom. "That daycare is on a very busy highway. What if he walked out to the highway and got hit? Or picked up... some random person?"

Documents show the daycare created a "plan to correct" which includes:

1. Two people at the van to check children in and out; one calls the kids' names in the van and the other checks off their names
2. An employee will check the van before it is parked, and the van driver will walk the van after it is parked
3. The daycare will no longer allow parents to come to the vans to pick up their kids and they must pick them up in the lobby after they have been checked in and the vans have been checked
4. The person in charge will report violations in a timely manner as they happen
5. The daycare will double check the attendance and document all children entering and leaving the vehicles. 
6. Teachers who have an absent student after the van run to call up front and make sure that child was not on the van that day. 
7. The document said the front desk also checks kids in on their front attendance

Scooter's mom thinks there's a different standard than if a parent left their child in a car.

"The child would be taken from you, criminal charges would have been done, like so many things would have happened. But yet a daycare can do it and it's just, 'oh, no, no we don't do that,'" said Branom. “I just can’t believe that it really happened. You know? Like wait what?”

Branum said she worked at the daycare and was on maternity leave. She told her boss she won't be returning.

"I was stern on my answer. It was no. I’m not going to think about it. This is me telling you the answer is no. I would be an idiot if I came back to the place that left my son alone in a vehicle. Are you kidding me? No. The answer is no," said Branom.