$15.3 Million for ‘Latchkey’ Child Care Starts to Flow

The first state dollars committed to the care of “latchkey” children are sluggishly trickling down to more than 150 school districts and nonprofit agencies in California, an effort that will ultimately result in after-school care for 16,000 children of working parents.

By the summer, much of the $15.3 million allocated by the Legislature last year should be in place, providing subsidized after-school supervision for about 8,000 poor or lower-middle-class children whose parents cannot afford to pay for the care.

The child-care operators who were granted the latchkey money must also make available another 8,000 slots for more affluent working parents, who will pay between $30 and $40 a week. There is expected to be heavy competition for the slots, so officials of child-care referral services are urging parents to apply at centers that have obtained the state grants now, even though the latchkey services may not be set up for several months.

“Parents should get a jump on it,” said Debra Schwid, a resource specialist with Child Youth and Family Services, a Silver Lake child-care referral service. “The money will help, but there will still be many children who will not get served.”

Funding Called ‘Historic’

When the money was approved in September, the program’s sponsor, Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles), proclaimed it “historic” because it represented the first time the state had taken aim at a much-publicized problem: hundreds of thousands of households, many run by a single parent, in which children between 5 and 13 were left on their own after school until their parents came home from work.

However, kicking the program into gear has been a frustrating experience that has exposed several weaknesses:

- In terms of tackling a societal problem, the money is a drop in the bucket. The state Department of Education’s child development division, which is supervising the latchkey program, estimates there are 800,000 latchkey children in the state. Roberti originally sought as much as $100 million, but had to whittle it down in the face of opposition in the Legislature and from Gov. George Deukmejian, who vetoed a $35-million latchkey program in 1984.

- Many centers which serve poor areas are finding themselves hard-pressed to meet the requirement that they balance the number of subsidized children with full-paying ones. That requirement was part of the political compromise that secured the latchkey funding in the waning hours of last year’s legislative session, but some center operators say the imbalance threatens them financially because they will not be fully reimbursed by the state unless they meet the 50-50 requirement.

- Center operators and the staff of the state child development division believe the Legislature did not base its funding on a realistic assessment of the cost of child care. While child-care costs in a metropolitan area like Los Angeles average $1.75 an hour, the state is reimbursing centers at a rate averaging only $1.55 an hour. “That presents a major problem,” said Robert Cervantes, assistant superintendent of the child development division.

Seeing the Need

Such obstacles are “nightmarish,” said Jorge Armendariz, director of latchkey services for Para Los Ninos, a downtown Los Angeles nonprofit group that has been funded to provide care for 150 youngsters. “But when you see the need, it makes you push forward and say maybe it is worth it.”

After the Legislature approved the latchkey program, the state received funding requests for about twice as much money as it had been given, and in February announced the awards of grants to 158 contractors. In Los Angeles County, 44 grants for a total of $5 million were given.

About half of the grants went to school districts, most of which saw the program as an opportunity to embark on after-school care programs.

(The Los Angeles Unified School District has developed an extensive after-school program in past years, serving about 11,000 students, but the program is restricted to children whose parents are enrolled in job training or are handicapped. With $450,000 in latchkey funds, the district is now establishing a network of new care centers at about a dozen schools, hoping to serve 25 to 30 latchkey children at each site, according to Shizuko Akasaki, assistant superintendent of the district’s child development division.)

Most of the other organizations receiving latchkey funding were nonprofit agencies, such as the YMCA, which already offer child-related services, state officials said.

Link to ‘Workfare’

The latchkey money was approved by the Legislature as part of a “workfare” bill, in which counties are to develop programs requiring able-bodied welfare recipients with children over the age of 6 to work, take job training or go to school. Children of the workfare participants will be eligible for subsidized slots in the latchkey centers. However, it may be years before all counties gear up their workfare programs.

According to the latchkey regulations, the centers must give highest priority to children whom authorities have found to be in danger of being abused or neglected. Families that receive federal or state benefits will also get priority. Full or partial subsidies will be available on a sliding scale for families whose gross monthly income is less than $1,909.

Sherry White, program manager of Children’s Home Society, a Long Beach child care-referral organization, suggested that the latchkey funding is so minimal and the need so great that extensive waiting lists may develop as the program gains public exposure, just as they have for preschool day-care programs.

“In the case of subsidized care for preschoolers, waiting lists of two to three years are not unusual,” she said.

Appeal to Legislature

Donne Brownsey, a consultant to Roberti, said supporters of latchkey funding are counting on an increasingly vocal demand to fuel an effort next year to increase the Legislature’s funding.

“I think a lot of communities are going to start agitating when they see what the communities that obtained the grants are doing,” she said. “There’s going to be an enormous pressure.”

White said she believes some working parents who qualify for subsidized latchkey slots may fail to apply because they “have shopped around for so long for something for their children to do after school that they have either given up, or gotten used to the process of what they’re doing--just telling the child, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that’ after school. The children have adjusted to being latchkey children, and they may be lost in the system.

“These people are almost analogous to the way they count unemployment figures--some people are unemployed for so long they stop trying to look. There are some parents who look for child care for so long and can’t afford it that after a while they say, ‘Forget it.’ ”