DATE: Friday, October 24, 1997              TAG: 9710240647

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH SIMPSON, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:  127 lines

CHILD CARE: CLINTONS CITE A "SILENT CRISIS": IN VIRGINIA LOCAL ADVOCATES HOPE THE NEW-FOUND PROMINENCE OF THE CHILD CARE ISSUE WILL LEAD TO HIGHER-QUALITY, MORE-AFFORDABLE OPTIONS FOR PARENTS.

To understand what people going from welfare to work face in finding child care, talk with people who have made the journey.

People like Virginia Beach resident LaTonya Bryant. She has two children - 4-year-old Alicia and 3-year-old Kyandra.

For her, getting a job was not the hardest part of exiting the welfare rolls.

That was easy.

The toughest part, she says, was finding someone she trusted to care for her children at a rate that didn't eat up half her paycheck from a department store. Especially, once the transitional help from the Department of Social Services ran out.

``I was making $200 and something, and child care was costing $100,'' she said. ``It took half my income.''

Her struggle is one that thousands of parents endure - 12.9 million children under 6 are in child care nationwide - and one that many welfare parents are facing for the first time as welfare reform measures go into effect in Hampton Roads. The work mandate portion of the state's welfare reform effort went on line this month in Hampton Roads, which means more than 9,000 parents are being thrust into jobs, and consequently, a search for child care.

The fact that so many more parents will now be in need of child care across the nation has brought new urgency to the issue, and Thursday's child-care conference in Washington went a step further in heightening that awareness.

Local advocates hope the new-found prominence of the topic will lead to more - and higher-quality - child care at rates affordable to parents.

``I'm hopeful,'' said Mary Louis Campbell, executive director of The Planning Council, which helps link families with quality child care. ``What I'm afraid of, though, is there will be a rush to provide care without proper attention to the quality, that there will be a willingness to say, `Any form will do,' instead of seeing the importance of quality. We can't afford that as a society.''

While some low-income parents may find relatives and friends who are trustworthy and willing to care for their children for free, many parents must beat the streets to find care providers who not only live up to their standards, but are cheap enough for their pocketbook.

And even when they find the right person or place, there are other issues to grapple with on a day-to-day basis: What to do when their child is sick, but the boss is breathing down their neck to be there, every day, no excuses. What to do if they work nights or weekends and the provider doesn't. What to do if they don't have a car to get their child to the provider. What to do when the water heater breaks down and brings them up short on the day-care bill.

``Many of these children will be in their first group setting in child care,'' said Toni Cacace-Beshears, director of Places and Programs for Children, which operates day care centers in Portsmouth, Suffolk, Norfolk and Chesapeake. ``So you know they're going to be picking up illnesses.''

Bryant got lucky, she discovered a child-care program she considers a godsend, called the Head Start wraparound program.

While Head Start, a federal education program for 3- and 4-year-olds, from low-income families, usually lasts a half-day, state funding was used to extend that day so that it lasts from 7:30 a.m. until 6 p.m. That way parents of the children can work. The care is free to most low-income parents. Some parents must pitch in a small co-payment.

``It's a blessing,'' said Bryant, whose oldest daughter attends the program. ``Sometimes I think about the people who don't have something like this. They need more programs like this to help people who are really trying.''

The wraparound child-care service is part of a network of child care that is helping move welfare parents into jobs. Places and Programs for Children, a United Way agency, provides child care to parents on a sliding scale. The Planning Council, based in Norfolk, has a subsidized child-care project in which low-income residents in public housing have opened regulated centers in their homes. And the Southeastern Tidewater Opportunity Project Inc., which operates the Head Start program in this area, has counselors to help low-income residents find solutions when child-care arrangements break down.

Those people in the first stages of moving off welfare will also have help from the state's Department of Social Services in the form of child-care subsidies. They will continue to receive child-care help during the first year after they stop receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families payments. Then they join a waiting list of the working poor, who also may qualify for the subsidies, but who are vying for a smaller pot of money than those subsidies set aside for welfare families.

The shift from receiving transitional help to making it on their own is often the point where parents face the the toughest challenge. Bryant said that's when she hit the wall. When she found a child-care provider she could afford, her children didn't like the woman, and would cry every day during drop-off. She later found out the provider was yelling and cursing at them. That's when she discovered the Head Start program, which saved the day for her.

Virginia Beach resident Latasha Johnson receives a subsidy to help pay for child care for her three children, ages 4, 3 and 1, while she works as a cashier at a restaurant. But she worries about what will happen when the assistance runs out in April. All three of her children will still need child care, and she can't figure out how her paycheck will stretch to cover the cost.

``Child care costs a lot,'' Johnson said. ``I'll probably have to get another job to pay for it.''

She has put her children on the waiting list for the Head Start wraparound program, which serves 219 families in South Hampton Roads, and has a waiting list of 321 families. Lawanna Dowden, who administers Head Start for this area, says there's a need for more funding to expand the program. And in Hampton Roads, she said, there's a severe shortage of infant care for low-income parents. She said the STOP organization has applied for grants to increase child-care slots for that age range, at an affordable rate.

Many times it's the working poor who get caught in the middle, unable to afford the best care, but too well-off to qualify for subsidies.

When Norfolk resident Criselda Pena separated from her husband three years ago, she found herself in a bind over how to pay for child care for her two daughters, who are 10 and 8. She didn't want to quit her job as a housekeeper at De Paul Hospital, but the hours - 6 p.m. to midnight - were such that it was hard to find someone to fill the gap.

She came up with a creative idea: She made fliers asking for parents who'd be willing to form a cooperative in which she would care for their children during the day, in exchange for a parent caring for her two children at night.

She found a family willing to do that, which worked for over a year. Nine months ago, the family moved away, but Pena's name finally came up on the child-care subsidy list for the working poor, after three years of waiting.

That allowed her to enroll her children at the Children's Workshop, one of only a handful of centers in the area that has nighttime hours.

``I have no family here, no brothers or sisters, and I couldn't afford child care without help,'' she said. ``It's mega money.'' ILLUSTRATION: IAN MARTIN/The Virginian-Pilot

Aaron ANderson and Alicia Bryant and Pansy Largent and Kristopher

Williams... KEYWORDS: CHILD CARE

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu