Sunday, November 1, 2009

Child care at Las Vegas casinos

This AP article says


The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority is pressing for a county code change that would let casinos provide temporary day care for conventions.
Current Clark County regulations allow resorts to set up permanent play areas for children but do not address licensing temporary child care at casino-convention areas.
Industry representatives say convention-goers prefer to have children looked after in the same meeting hall or in the room next door, not on a different floor or several blocks away.
They want their children within sight or close enough to check on at a moment's notice, said Yvette Monet, spokeswoman for MGM Mirage. Temporary licensing gives casinos the flexibility to set up day care areas wherever the meetings are held, she added.
My first question is what the county regulations have to do with licensing child care facilities. There is a Nevada Bureau of Services for Child Care. I couldn't find any reference to temporary licensing on their web page. Or maybe they'll just call it drop-in care, because the parents are on-site, so the county regs come in as a business license thing rather than a child care licensing thing.

My second question is how temporary licensing would work. In California, CCL wants a lot of information about a site. I suppose Nevada licensing could inspect all the proposed temporary sites ahead of time, and then either let that stand when a convention that needs child care comes to town, or check right before a particular convention, to make sure standards are still being met.

My third question is what the temporary casino centers would be like. I'm not a Vegas person. I was there once, ten years or so ago, and spent an hour or so in a kids area in the basement of a casino. It was full of kid games with all the sounds and flashing lights and action of the real upstairs gambling games. That it, it was certainly too loud and active for me, but it also certainly hyped up the kids. I wonder if the casino/convention child care would use the same model of pretend gambling.

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