By Appleseed News
Richland County, Ohio
MANSFIELD — A Sept. 21, 2026, complaint inspection by the Ohio Department of Children and Youth found that a child-care staff member at Fran’s Child Care Center at the Mansfield Area Y used prohibited discipline techniques, including biting a child on the hand and putting soap in another child’s mouth, according to state records obtained through a public records request.
The center is at 750 Scholl Road in Mansfield. Its license number is 000000406881. The Sept. 21 findings are the most severe in a series of licensing citations spanning Oct. 29, 2025, to Sept. 21, 2026 — 327 days.
Ohio substantiated that a staff member used prohibited techniques the report describes as cruel, harsh, unusual, or extreme. The inspection report states a teacher bit a child on the hand to stop the child from biting and put soap in another child’s mouth to stop that child from spitting. Regulators marked that finding as moderate risk and set a corrective action plan due date of Oct. 22, 2026.
The same inspection also substantiated that the program did not complete a required Incident/Injury Report when an unusual incident jeopardized a child’s safety — the soap incident — and that a serious incident was not reported in Ohio’s statewide licensing system by the next business day. Both of those reporting findings were marked low risk, with the same Oct. 22 corrective action deadline.
Those were not the only problems in the records.
On Oct. 29, 2025, Ohio substantiated that staff did not meet a child’s basic needs when children were served burned food at lunch.
On Nov. 20, 2025, inspectors found a staff member used a discipline technique that was not developmentally appropriate. In the corrective action plan filed with the state, the program wrote that the teacher who was raising her voice in a negative manner was terminated that day, Nov. 20, 2025.
On Dec. 15, 2025, inspectors found infants had been put to sleep in infant seats instead of cribs.
On May 22, 2026, inspectors again found infants sleeping in infant seats. They also found another use of discipline that was not developmentally appropriate, and that an Incident/Injury Report was not accurate. Those May findings were recorded as additional non-compliances during a complaint investigation.
Then came the Sept. 21, 2026, inspection: biting, soap in a child’s mouth, a missing incident report, and a late serious-incident report to the state.
Across that period, the same categories of violation appear more than once. Unsafe infant sleep was cited in December 2025 and again in May 2026. Improper discipline was cited in November 2025, May 2026, and September 2026. Incident-reporting problems were cited in May 2026 and September 2026. After earlier citations, the program submitted corrective action plans describing training and monitoring. Later inspections still documented related non-compliances.
Other complaint allegations in the same records packet were marked unable to be determined and are not reported here as proven.
Parents in Richland County can review the center’s licensing history through Ohio’s child care search tools and ask the program how it responded to each citation, especially the Sept. 21, 2026, findings.
