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By Ellen Keelan, in collaboration with Windham Child Care Association Permission for publication elsewhere is freely granted, so long as credit is given to Ellen Keelan, Windham Child Care Association, and the Brattleboro Reformer. 1. Child care in crisis: Growing need, limited resources When the Children's Center on Main closed its doors last May, parents like Diana Wilson were left scrambling -- again. "When our family child care provider became ill, I went to Windham Child Care Association and got a list of child care centers," says Wilson. "My reasoning was that a center was more likely to remain open and provide consistent care. The Children's Center had an opening for an infant, so I brought him there. A few months later, they told us they were closing." Wilson was lucky. With the help of Windham Child Care Association referral specialist Ylan Roy, she found an opening for her son in yet another program -- one she hopes will last. Unfortunately for families in Windham County and throughout the nation, finding adequate -- or any -- child care has become a game of chance. All too often, the odds are against them. "There are just so, so many children that need care," says Roy, who has seen a large increase in the demand for child care over the past two years, but no increase in available spaces. That translates into little or no choice for parents who want the best for their children. "A child care provider told me last week that she had an opening for an infant, and she got 13 calls in a week. Parents call me in tears, saying, 'What do you mean, my six-month-old has got one choice and it's thirty minutes away and there are eight other kids there!' A lot of them don't get the answers from me that they want." Why the crunch? More parents than ever before, especially single parents, are entering the workforce. Across the country, a stay-at-home parent is the exception, not the rule. In fact, only one in every ten American families now conforms to the traditional model of a mom at home and a dad at work. Vermont's child care system has been especially hard hit. Due to low wages statewide, a growing number of families need two incomes to make ends meet. That's one reason that 75% of Vermont mothers with youngest children under six are in the workforce -- the highest percentage in the nation. Add to this the thousands of parents with young children who must seek work due to welfare reform -- many of whom have no other resources for child care, such as extended family or a partner. As a result, there are only enough slots in registered or licensed homes in Windham County for an estimated 37% of the children under two and 60% of the children aged two to five who need care. Children unable to secure places in regulated programs often end up in substandard or haphazard care, shuffling from neighbor to friend as parents struggle to fit their children's best interests into the family's economic needs. "I'm amazed to hear about all the juggling that families do," confirms Roy. "You find a relative or a next door neighbor who can watch your child for a little while, or you lose your job and look for a different one. Families are pretty resourceful, but they're certainly not doing what their first choice would be a lot of the time." Child care providers like Brattleboro's Sue Clarke see the struggle firsthand. "Families are doing crazy things to meet their child care needs. I know moms who are working shifts from 5:00 in the afternoon to 7:00 in the morning so they can work two days a week instead of five. That way grandma can watch the kids overnight, and they don't need five days of care." With parents under stress and resources limited, children may pay the price. "The early childhood education market is so tight that parents often don't have quality as their first concern," says Janice Stockman of the Head Start State Collaboration Project. "When you have to be at work at 7:30 and you live in Vernon, there may be no choice. With those kinds of limits on what people can consider, quality considerations kind of fall to the bottom of the barrel." The situation isn't likely to improve unless the field is able to woo and retain workers -- something that has proved difficult in an occupation that is notoriously undervalued. According to a statewide study conducted this spring, starting salaries for teachers in Vermont's early childhood centers begin at just under $11,000 -- less than dogcatchers or parking lot attendants. Only half of full-time employees receive health benefits or paid vacation. The picture is even bleaker for family child care providers who run children's programs in their own homes. Open for 11 hours a day on average, most family providers earn under $10,000 a year after swallowing costs for maintenance, supplies, insurance, overtime, and other necessities. Low wages are the main reason that nearly 40% of Windham County's child care providers leave the field annually. "I just raised my rates after four years, and it was really hard for me," says Clarke. "The reason I do this is not just for the money -- it's to support families. And now I've priced some people out of my program, which is not something I want to do. But I realize if I don't make a decent living, my family is not going to have what they need, and I'm not going to be able to stick with it." Those whose job it is to fill the gap, like Tapp Barnhill, student advisor and director of CCV's Early Childhood Certificate program, are clearly discouraged. "Until we start treating early childhood education as we treat kindergarten through eighth grade and support it with salaries and health benefits that are appropriate, I'm hesitant to steer people in this direction," says Barnhill. "Yet at the same time, we have this tremendous need for caregivers, especially for quality caregivers who are getting their education. It's a real Catch-22." Caught in the middle, parents looking for care resolve to look a little harder -- and hope their luck holds out. | |||
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