You drop your kids off at a daycare center and assume they’re safe from harm, injury or even death. In Illinois, that may not be the case. The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) does not have the staff to conduct mandatory unannounced visits at every center. Nor do they have the staff for a more thorough inspection, which is required every three years when the facility’s license is up for renewal.

DCFS has only 123 of its 2,900 employees assigned to licensing some 12,285 homes and centers. That’s about half of the number needed for the job. Between 2009 and 2011, more than half (55.4 percent) of daycare facilities weren’t inspected. Your child could be in one of them.

This is not to point a finger at daycare providers. Most strive to do their best with limited means. But the fact is, the state has set some very high standards that are being violated. Without some changes to the system, something tragic will happen to some of these kids.

In fact, it already has. In its coverage of the issue, the Chicago Tribune reports it examined nearly a dozen incidents in the last five years in which a child died or was abused at a child care facility. In each case, DCFS records show that the agency had inspected the facility.  While violations were sometimes noted, none were linked to what happened.

In one well-publicized case, a daycare worker in Lincolnshire, Ill., was sentenced to 31 years in prison for throwing a toddler to the floor. He died from his injuries. At the time, the worker was alone in a room with 8 children; state standards require that at least one other adult be present when that many children are present.

In another instance, a two-year-old girl drowned in a swimming pool that wasn’t properly secured. DCFS had instructed the owner, who was operating without a license, to shut down her facility, but it never happened. While the owner was charged with endangering the life of a child and operating without a license, she has pleaded not guilty.

In a third incident, a two-year-old boy died from smoke inhalation after another unsupervised child started a fire in the basement. The owner has been issued a violation for insufficient working smoke detectors, which DCFS records show was fixed. But a further investigation shows that the owner hadn’t conducted mandatory fire drills and first tried to extinguish the fire before evacuating the children.

Aggravating the problem is that DCFS must do more with less. It has cut its daycare licensing staff by 18.5 percent over three years, meaning the current staff must visit twice as many facilities as national standards call for.

Here’s the bottom line about which no one can really disagree: something must be done. If it happened once, twice, three times, it can happen again.