Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

State officials suspect there are dozens of underground child care operations in West Texas.

"I suspect it is a growing problem," said Greg Cunningham, regional spokesman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

The reason he's suspicious: Fewer licensed and registered day care facilities, in spite of more children and higher demands for care. And it may be a growing problem in West Texas.

Nearly 50 children in Texas have died at illegal day care operations in the past four years, according to the state agency.

As a result, the agency has launched a new campaign called "Don't Be in the Dark About Child Care."

And they ask parents to do their homework.

Anyone who regularly cares for at least one unrelated child outside that child's home and gets paid must have a state certificate. Licensed centers must abide to a host of safety requirements, inspections, training and criminal background checks.

"Child care licensing is providing certain reassurances, that certain things have happened before you've dropped your child off," Cunningham said. "There's literally thousands of things we check."

State officials say leaving your children with an illegal operator can be dangerous because there's no checks of those facilities.

"A lot of parents never to stop to think - who's looking after the folks looking after my kids?" Cunningham said.

State officials suspect the problem is worse in rural areas of West Texas, where some counties have very few legal facilities. For example, there were no licensed centers and only three legal home-based facilities in Crosby County last year, enough to legally care for up to 12 children, state records show. Yet there were about 1,609 children living there.

"We think that a lot of the providers have gone underground," Cunningham said. "We're talking scores of homes."

Some parents don't know about the law, he said, and some ignore it. That's because illegal centers can be attractive if they are cheaper and have fewer children.

Most illegal operations are home-based, according to the state agency.

That's what Melissa Alvis was doing. She illegally watched between five and seven children in her Plainview home for a number of years.

"I knew all about the rules and regulations," Alvis said.

But she thought the registration process was too daunting.

Everything changed in March when a mother of a young child she watched turned her in to authorities.

Alvis became registered in early June - and the whole process was much easier than she thought.

"I would encourage everyone to do it," she said.

Facilities are subject to at least one surprise inspection a year. And staff also must undergo training to ensure they are ready to take care of the state's youngest residents.

"You are monitored," said Kathy Sisson, owner of Children's World Learning Center. "It's from top to bottom - from cleanliness to record keeping - the main thing is the safety of the children."

She said she think day care centers would not be as safe if they weren't heavily regulated.