Since 7-month-old Matthew Perilli suffocated in his crib this summer at a Queens day care center, parents across the city have been left to wonder whether the centers they send their children to are safe.

The City Council’s General Welfare Committee voted yesterday to strengthen oversight for thousands of day care facilities and increase monitoring of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which oversees licensure and inspections.

The committee approved four bills that, among other things, require the health department to post information about licenses and inspections online, and make information about violations more accessible. The legislation also requires the agency to report to the council four times a year with summaries of complaints, agency staffing levels, and recent inspections.

“From the average-citizen point of view, this will let them get more immediate information and help them make good choices,” the chairman of the committee and a lead sponsor of the legislation, Council Member Bill de Blasio, said.

“It’s a tool to push everyone to perform better,” the Brooklyn Democrat said. “Reporting is going to change things, improve things across the board.”

The legislation, most of which has support from the Bloomberg administration, requires the health department to post summaries of its inspections on its Web site, and to make sure referral agencies can find out if a day care center gets its license yanked.

The city’s health commissioner, Thomas Frieden, who ordered a full investigation of his own agency immediately after Matthew’s death, told the committee yesterday his agency increased the number of inspections it performs each week to 500 from 370, and improved training. Now, he said, it is working to upgrade its technology, trying to acquire hand-held electronic devices for inspectors that are linked to state databases.

The report Dr. Frieden ordered found major internal flaws, such as inadequate staffing, training, and communication. What complicates matters is that different types of facilities are subject to different city and state regulations.

Dr. Frieden said parents should notify the city about facilities that do not have the specified number of adults on site and have more children than they are licensed for.

“What we identified was a series of problems within the bureau, problems that had gone on for many years, and had been unrecognized,” the commissioner said.

The city has shut dozens of centers since the August 11 incident, which happened at Devlin Day Care Center in Forest Hills, while two health care inspectors happened to be at the site. It now faces a $5 million lawsuit from the family.

Council members are hoping the legislation will prevent future day care tragedies.

“You can’t ever say that this definitely wouldn’t have happened,” Mr. de Blasio said. “What you can say is that it would have given us a much greater chance of avoiding that tragedy. And going forward, the level of awareness and the higher standards will make it much less likely that we’re going to have this kind of problem in the future.”

The full council is expected to adopt the legislation Wednesday.