Irvine’s Day-Care Lead Should Be Followed

The city of Irvine, with its development of what is believed to be the first day-care center in the nation built by a city, once again is in the forefront in meeting the desperate need for more child care and in charting a course for other communities to follow.

The innovative facility will be located in the new civic center complex and will provide more than 100 child-care slots for city employees and other residents when it opens in early October.

The project is in keeping with the formal policy the city adopted in late 1986 pledging that “safe, affordable, quality child-care facilities and service will be available to those who reside and/or work in the city of Irvine and are in need of such services.”

The city has done more than pay lip service to that promise. Irvine is one of the few communities in the nation with a full-time paid child- care coordinator on the city staff. And the city works closely with the business community and the school district to provide child care in centers leased and run by private nonprofit groups. That is how the new civic center day-care facility will be operated.

The advantages of adequate child- care service for employees is well founded. Lateness and absenteeism are reduced when children are well cared for while their parents are at work. Morale and efficiency increase. The benefits are magnified with an on-site center where children and parents are near each other and can even spend lunch breaks together.

The city’s enthusiasm for providing more critically needed child care is catching on among others in Irvine. A group of employers and the Chamber of Commerce are planning to open a nonprofit day-care center in the old city hall when the space becomes available.

But too little is being done elsewhere in the public and private sectors to meet the great shortage of child-care services in the county, which has the second largest child population in the state.

It has been two years since the Birtcher family opened the county’s first on-site day-care center in an industrial park in Santa Ana. The federal government opened a day-care center in June for Internal Revenue Service employees in Laguna Niguel. But so far there has been no action from the county Board of Supervisors. Nearly a year ago, the board ordered studies on whether new industrial and commercial developments could be required to provide child care for employees and on the possibility of leasing regional park facilities that sit idle most weekdays to private companies to use as day-care centers. Pursuing the possibility of opening a child-care center for government workers in the county Civic Center in Santa Ana was also urged by Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez. It should be pursued.

Still more must be done because the need is far greater than the spaces available. Providing child care should receive a fast-track response from government and private industry, not only in Irvine but throughout the county.