Southern California Job Market : FITTING IN FAMILY : Sick Kids : Child-care services help take burden off parents so they can remain on the job.

Sick kids are a $2-billion to $12-billion malaise for American business each year.

That is the amount of money that child-care experts estimate it costs in lost productivity when parents are unable to work, held hostage by cold viruses, flu bugs, earaches and other ailments afflicting their young children.

Baby sitters may be unavailable during the day, or may be unaffordable altogether for low-income parents. Relatives may not live close by. And sick kids are unwelcome in most day-care centers because their germs will spread.

“You just hope they don’t get sick,” said Sindy Sanchez, a Northridge mother and sales assistant for Shearson Lehman Hutton in Woodland Hills.

For many parents, the only solution to the sick-kid problem is to stay home from work. But doing so is difficult in an age when both parents often must hold down jobs to support the family or to make the kind of hefty mortgage payments common in areas such as Southern California where housing costs are so high.

Staying home is even more difficult for single parents. What’s more, workers may not have generous sick-day policies in their jobs. Or their employers may not be understanding.

Dr. Glenn Austin, a Los Altos pediatrician, said, “I’ve had patients who were fired from their jobs because they stayed home when their children were sick. They are caught in a trap.”

One alternative in some parts of the country is day-care “sniffles centers” for mildly sick children. Such centers have been spreading since 1984 and usually are started in hospitals or subsidized by grants, government agencies or employers. More than 100 such programs exist nationwide.

In Southern California, two major ones operate at Torrance Memorial Hospital, which started its program in 1985, and Northridge Hospital Medical Center, which started its program last November. Typically, the centers care for anywhere from four children a day to more than 20 during flu season.

Northridge Hospital President Jeffery Flocken said the program was started initially for hospital employees, in part because hospitals are having to come up with innovative benefits to attract nurses because they are in short supply. It was soon expanded when it became clear that there was a public demand for the service.

Located in the hospital’s pediatric wing, Northridge Hospital’s center, called Kids Care, includes a quiet room, cribs and beds, crafts, a kitchen, videocassettes for kids to watch and Nintendo video games. The cost for non-employees of the hospital is $3.25 an hour, about what a baby sitter can cost. Parents have to supply all medicine, even if it is over the counter, and diapers.

Among the users of the center is Sanchez, the Northridge mother. Last November, her son came down with the flu. She called Northridge Hospital for advice on where to take him and found out about the program.

“I probably would have had to stay home,” she said.

The programs do not always prove successful. Two Los Angeles hospitals, California Medical Center and Orthopedic Hospital, recently closed centers for mildly sick kids. The actions were blamed in part on the reluctance of some parents to bring sick children to an unfamiliar place.

What to do with sick children is also a problem at national day-care chains. The largest chain, Kinder-Care, headquartered in Montgomery, Ala., calls parents when children are sick and asks that they be taken home. The company provides isolation rooms for children until parents arrive, but not all-day care.

The second-largest chain, La Petite Academy in Kansas City, Mo., is launching an experiment at centers in Atlanta, Houston and San Antonio with separate facilities for children who are sick, such as “chicken pox rooms.”

“It’s an issue we are all facing,” said Jack L. Broxman, president of La Petite Academy.

Day-care center executives said one of the most difficult obstacles is staffing because the number of trained people needed on any given day is so unpredictable.

Child-care experts say the best form of care for sick children, short of having a parent stay home, is to arrange for in-home care. In addition, children who are cared for in the home on a regular basis also get sick less.

A study in the American Journal of Public Health published in April said that parents arranging for care for children in the home on average lost 0.19 days of work a month. That contrasts with 0.52 days a month lost by parents whose children were in day-care centers because they were exposed to illness more.

Yet in-home care is too expensive for many parents. But their medical bills are higher if their children are sick. The study found that the monthly cost of medical care for children in day-care centers was $32.94, compared to $19.78 when children are cared for in other settings.

Austin, the Los Altos pediatrician and former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said parents can cut down on their children’s illnesses through regular preventive care by a pediatrician and thorough inspection of day-care centers before choosing one. In addition, he suggests that parents “baby-proof” their homes to prevent serious accidents that may require the parent to stay home.

But child-care experts say that what an employee can do is limited. They say that employers should recognize the high cost of sick kids in employee productivity and work out solutions with workers to lower the cost of lost productivity.

The American Journal of Public Health study found that sick children accounted for 40% of the days parents in the study were absent from work and urged employers to consider subsidizing healthier child care alternatives.

Some large companies have estimated that sick kids cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in absenteeism. A report in Pediatrician Magazine provided the estimate of $2 billion to $12 billion nationwide.

Among the possibilities Austin suggests is job-sharing, in which two employees share a single job, more flexible work schedules and allowing employees to work at home when their children are sick.