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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 26, 1995                   TAG: 9507260015
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DAY CARE FOR SICK CHILDREN SEEMS TO BE CONTAGIOUS

Pirkle's daughter, Michelle, only 16 weeks old at the time, was ill and could not go to her regular day care, and neither Pirkle nor her husband, James, a doctor, could miss work.

``I was trying to figure out what in the world to do. I don't have any family in town,'' she recalled.

Fortunately, it was only a few days earlier that Pirkle's husband had happened upon Huggs & Kisses, a downtown day care center that opened in 1990 for children with mild illnesses.

With a staff composed of nursing assistants, a low teacher-child ratio and rooms to separate children according to their illness, the center was just what the Pirkles wanted.

Since then, Michelle, now 4, has become a familiar face at Huggs & Kisses, one of a relatively small number of day-care facilities dedicated to helping parents balance their careers with their kids' medical needs.

Facilities like Huggs & Kisses are growing in number, but the president of the National Association for Sick-Child Day Care still knows of only about 100 nationwide.

About half the nation's sick-child centers are in hospitals, said Gail Johnson, and many have contracts with companies to care for the sick children of employees who otherwise would have to miss work.

The city of Birmingham offers care at Huggs & Kisses as a fully paid employee benefit, and St. Vincent's Hospital pays half of the $37-per-day cost for its workers. Huggs & Kisses opened a branch about nine months ago at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama for employees' children.

Children with common illnesses such as colds, stomach viruses or chicken pox most often use the centers, but the Birmingham facility has even cared for children recovering from surgery. It accepts children 2 months to 15 years of age.

A staff of six is on call, with the actual number of workers on a given day dependent on the number of children who show up. The center's owner, pediatrician Jacqueline Stewart, examines children each morning, and the staff contacts a child's primary doctor when needed.

The president of the national organization said the first sick-child day-care centers opened in California in the late 1970s, and the idea has spread slowly.

``Ten years ago, people didn't want to take care of infants in group settings. Today, it's everywhere. I think sick-child care is going to be the same way,'' said Johnson, who works at Get-Well Place, a sick-child day care in Richmond, Va.

There are obstacles to expansion, however. No. 1 is the fact that many parents cannot stand the thought of being away from their children during time of illness. ``People feel so uncomfortable about leaving their child, even when they're well,'' Johnson said.

Cost is another problem, according to Abby Shapiro Kendrick of Work-Family Directions, a Boston-based consulting firm.

Sick-child care ranges in cost from $15 to $50 per day, she said, and that amount usually has to be paid on top of regular day-care costs. Because of that, only well-paid workers tend to use the centers.

``These facilities are expensive to operate. The amount of care and attention these children need is even higher than a normally operating center, which are also very staff-intensive,'' Kendrick said.

Stewart opened Huggs & Kisses in response to what she saw as a need of her patients' parents. Mothers and fathers were constantly being torn between work and taking care of their ill children.

``As I looked for resources for them, I realized there were none,'' she said.

The doctor is hopeful that more companies will begin to subsidize sick-child day care as a way to reduce costs associated with employee absences.

``The concept is catching on,'' Stewart said.