Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, May 10, 1994                   TAG: 9405100109
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CHILD CARE

What's one got to do with the other? More, assuredly, than you might think from reading the headlines. The two are connected.GOV. GEORGE Allen's plans for getting hundreds of welfare mothers back into the work force, like other welfare-reform ideas, will depend not only on the availability of jobs but also on the availability of care for their children while they work.

Affordable, accessible, reliable child-care resources are critically inadequate throughout Virginia, including the Roanoke Valley. Statewide, there are only 100,000 licensed spaces available for some 600,000 children who need the service, according to the Virginia Council on Child Day Care and Early Childhood Programs. This prevents many recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children - what most people think of as welfare - from even seeking work. Moreover, it can force working mothers in low-paying jobs to abandon self-sufficiency and the work force to go onto the welfare rolls.

Thus, the new effort by the Junior League of Roanoke Valley to create a $1 million endowment for nursery-school scholarships makes common cause with the governor's new task force: to help more low-income families overcome tremendous child-care hurdles.

Annual costs of licensed child care in the Roanoke Valley range from $3,400 to $6,500. Even for a woman in a job that pays, say, $21,000 a year - a job, that is, easily paying more than double the minimum wage -this amount can be staggering, representing as much as half the after-tax take-home pay for only one child.

The League, additionally, will help the YWCA in downtown Roanoke establish a special-needs day-care center by 1996. This center would include care for sick children whose parents must leave them to go to jobs. Clearly, this is another critical need for working parents who may not have relatives or neighbors available to tend sick children.

The League has launched its new campaign with a $250,000 contribution, and is pledging $50,000 a year for the next five years. It will ask Roanoke Valley residents and businesses to contribute another $100,000 annually for five years.

At a time of great focus on economic development in this region, it's hard to imagine a cause more worthy. Yes, that's right; child care is, indeed, an economic-development issue. A number of studies have confirmed that the quality of a community's child-care services are a key factor in choosing where to relocate or expand their operations. Why? Good child-care services strengthen the availability and reliability of the work force.

So best of luck to the Junior League. Of course, we wish Gov. Allen's welfare-reform panel the best of luck, too. If we were in the odd-making business, though, we might bet on the League - based on its many previous successes - to meet its goals first.For "empowerment" to be more than another welfare-reform and anti-poverty buzzword, the tools must be on hand to make it possible. If the League succeeds, and its track record is excellent for other projects it has undertaken in the past, the Roanoke Valley will be closer to having one of the most important of those tools.