College of the Canyons’ New Program Trains Child Care Specialists. Call It . . . : Nanny and the Professor

Ask the typical working mom what she needs most and chances are she’ll say she needs either a week off or a nanny.

Ask Deborah Davis, president of the International Nanny Assn. and publisher of the National Nanny Newsletter. She has had 16 nannies in the last seven years, “and some of them lasted only two days,” she said.

Some of the nannies were schooled in the art of child-rearing but lacked practical experience; others insisted on being involved in intrafamily squabbles; one, a pediatrics nurse, couldn’t cope with children who weren’t sick.

Now, with children ages 3 and 7, Davis has a mother’s helper, someone to merely baby-sit the children rather than to take an active role in their education or personal development.

Even with all of Davis’ contacts, she couldn’t find a trained nanny who met her qualifications.

Training Program

According to the International Nanny Assn., a trained nanny is someone “employed by a family either on a live-in or live-out basis to undertake all tasks related to the care of the children, such as child care and the domestic tasks related to that.” Davis says that because nannies work in isolation in the home, they should be required by the state to go through a training program similar to that required for preschool teachers: 12 semester units of child care.

College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, responding to the increasing demand for professionally trained nannies in Southern California, started the first Los Angeles County community college “nanny program” in January.

Graduates of the program--called “in-home child-care specialists”--will be prepared not just for live-in and live-out child care but also for preschool teaching.

The program is designed to be completed in one year, said Maureen Chapple, a member of the college’s faculty in child development. “But most of our students will take longer because they are not full time.” Credits can be transferred to a four-year college.

“Many of the students developed their concept of the nanny not from real-life experience but from the movie ‘Mary Poppins,’ or from what they’ve heard about celebrities’ nannies,” Chapple said.

The average student in the program is 19 to 25 years old; a few are in their 30s with children of their own, she said. Several students are working as nannies to put themselves through school.

In England, where nannies are a tradition, the nursery nurse (the official British term for a trained nanny) must have two years of formal training and must pass a national board exam, said Jill Fernandez, assistant principal of the Norland Nursery Training College in Hungerford, England. At the end of the training, the nursery nurse is licensed to work in a range of settings, including day-care centers, residential care homes, recreation and parks programs, and as a play therapist in hospitals.

“One of the big problems we have is that people are going from no training to having just a few weeks of experience and calling themselves nannies,” Chapple said.

But although there is no standardized training, nannies in this area are paid from $175 to $300 or more a week for live-ins, and Chapple said agencies report that they have from 10 to 100 openings for every qualified person.

“Experience counts a lot in this profession,” she said, “and the salary will be dependent on the nanny’s negotiating ability, willingness to relocate and need to live in or out.”

Davis reports that she knows of one live-in nanny in Detroit, a registered nurse, who makes $800 a week plus benefits. “But I tell students the more wealthy the family, the more complex--and difficult--the family situation.”

The “core certificate” offered by College of the Canyons requires 13 units of course work, including classes in child growth and development, structuring a child’s day and managing a group of children, along with lab experience in a preschool setting. The nanny certificate--or In-Home Child Care Specialist--requires an additional 25 1/4 units, including courses in nutrition, health concerns in early childhood (taught by a registered nurse), home safety and teaching activities based on age and development, such as “Music and Motor Development for the Young Child” or “Literature and Language for the Young Child.” The program also teaches students to deal with conflict, differences of opinion with their employers and such issues as divorce in the family. The nanny student must also have a negative TB test, and pass a Red Cross First Aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation course.

Some students in the program seem unsure of what they are looking for or what the work will be like after they complete their certificates.

Tonia Brown, 20, of Saugus says she was “looking through the catalogue, and nothing appealed to me as much” as the nanny program. “I’ve been baby-sitting since I was 12 and I work in a day-care center; I like the program, and I’m learning so many new things.” Her future? “I’m pretty confident I could get a job--I love kids--but I know if I get married, the live-in nanny wouldn’t be a good alternative.”

Renae Valades, 18, sees the nanny program as a steppingstone to greater things. “I’ve wanted to work with little kids,” she said. “If I’m not a pediatrician, I’d like to be a nanny.”

Other schools are catching on to the developing demand for good child care and are planning to start nanny programs. Cal State Los Angeles plans to start a two- to three-year program based on Britain’s nursery nurse model in the fall of 1990, and Chaffey College has a program slated to start the next year.

As the nanny’s training increases, so will the salaries. “These are professionals, so they don’t come cheap,” Chapple said. Who will be able to afford these high-priced professionals? “That’s a good question,” she said. “But if we’re going to raise the standards, we have to make it a paid profession.”