Child-Care Centers Set for Job-Seeking Mothers

Federally funded after-school child-care centers, designed to free up welfare mothers so they can find jobs or enter training programs, will open later this year at four Los Angeles housing projects, Mayor Tom Bradley announced Thursday.

The centers, which will serve 245 school-age children, will be set up in community rooms on city Housing Authority property with a 1-year, $329,190 grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“The women of the projects will benefit . . . greatly,” Leila Gonzalez-Correa, Housing Authority executive director, said at a news conference at the Ramona Gardens housing project. “I believe the residents want to lift themselves out of that cycle of poverty.”

One center at Nickerson Gardens in Watts, the city’s largest housing project, will serve about 150 school-age children. About 30 to 35 children will be served at each of the other centers--at Ramona Gardens in East Los Angeles, Pueblo del Rio in South Los Angeles and Normont Gardens in Wilmington, Bradley aide Wendy Greuel said.

The money for the program is part of $3 million distributed this year by HUD to housing projects nationwide for child-care centers.

The centers are slated to open in March, but some may not be ready until June.

The free or low-cost child care will enable welfare parents to get jobs or take job-training classes, Bradley said.

A new state law requires single mothers or fathers on welfare who have school-age children to go to work, enter job-training programs or risk losing their welfare payments.