Will Congress at Last Legislate for Child-Care?

A study now confirms what we, and our grandmothers, have known all along: Children who are unsupervised after school are more likely to get into trouble. And these days, trouble means drugs.

Latchkey children are twice as likely to use marijuana, alcohol and cigarettes as are children cared for by adults after school, according to a USC study involving 5,000 eighth-graders in Los Angeles and San Diego, published in the September issue of Pediatrics.

The relationship between regular self-care (11 hours per week or more) and substance abuse holds true regardless of other circumstances such as family income, number of parents in the household, the child’s extracurricular activities or involvement in sports.

Here we have a strategic opportunity in the national war on drugs.

If the estimated 13 million latchkey children under the age of 14 in the United States were enrolled in extended-day programs at school, or in supervised after-school recreational activities, then early drug use among teen-agers could be significantly reduced.

Los Angeles is already working on a variety of solutions to the latchkey problem. Just recently, the City Council voted to spend $4.5 million in city funds to extend the hours of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s regular after-school recreation program from 4 p.m. until 6 p.m. every afternoon in all 306 elementary and junior high schools located within the city limits.

This open--but supervised--program is free, for all students who attend city schools or live in the school neighborhoods. Attendance, somewhat complicated by busing, averages 30,000 students at a cost of about $265 per child for the school year.

Several smaller, more expensive programs, with students formally “enrolled,” are run by the Los Angeles district in 121 locations in or very near school buildings. Parents pay fees calculated on a sliding scale. Fee subsidies come from a variety of sources: state money, city money, even a $500,000 grant from a local corporation--Kaiser Permanente--for the blue-ribbon mayor’s program.

While the nationwide number of children still unsupervised after school presents a continuing challenge, Los Angeles shows strong resolve in testing a number of solutions simultaneously while using creative funding strategies. A similar resolve must be shown on the national policy level.

At the national level, concern for the needs of school-age children cannot be separated from the equally important developmental needs of infants, toddlers and preschool children of parents who work. A strong national child-care policy must give all children access to high quality, age-appropriate care while their parents are at work.

Three child-care bills are now pending in Congress. Thanks to the leadership of Augustus F. Hawkins (D-Los Angeles), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, the two bills under consideration in the House of Representatives include provisions for school-age child care.

Title II of HR 3, sponsored by Hawkins, allocates 25% of an estimated $1.78 billion national outlay to year-round school-based care for preschoolers and school children up to the age of 12.

In addition, HR 3 expands Head Start to full daytime hours all year and opens the program to families with incomes higher than the qualifying level on a fee-paying basis. With this change, Head Start would finally become integrated across socioeconomic class lines, a bonus for the children. HR 3 also: expands the supply of infant and toddler day care through subsidies to providers; helps states coordinate local training, monitoring and referral programs, and makes provisions to enhance corporate support of child care.

The House Ways and Means Committee is working on a $1.85-billion bill for child care that adopts most of the HR 3 measures as reported out of the Education and Labor Committee--including latchkey care--but omits funding of infant and toddler care. Instead, in an effort to help families as directly as possible with the cost of child care, the Ways and Means bill increases the Dependent Care Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit, and--along the lines of President Bush’s preferred child-care plan--makes the Dependent Care Tax Credit refundable so that poorer families with little tax liability can reap some benefit as well. In the Ways and Means version, Title XX of the Social Services Block Grants to individual states would also be increased by a designated amount--now set at $350 million--specifically earmarked for child care.

A third piece of legislation, the Senate’s Act for Better Child-Care Services, or ABC bill, sponsored by Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), was passed by the Senate in June. At $1.75 billion, it combines tax credits with subsidies to low-income families to help them pay for child care. Although the bill does not mandate minimum standards or training for providers, it encourages states to adopt these measures. More than anyone, Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) has championed standards of quality in child care and can be credited with keeping this important issue alive.

In evaluating these bills, look for what is best for children--for their healthy growth and development. We are interested in quality, because child care doesn’t help children unless it’s good care. Every day in this country, hundreds of thousands of children are left in situations that are only detrimental to their well-being.

In a national child-care policy, we want to see provisions to help low-income families pay for quality child care. Money is the issue: There is a direct relationship between the cost of child care and the quality of child care. All three bills work to put money for child care in the hands of the poor.

The best legislation would contain the best elements of all three bills. The Senate bill leads the way in setting standards of quality. The needs of school-age children, often ignored in discussions of child care, are best addressed in the two House bills.

We especially like the provision in the House bills for the use of neighborhood school buildings for child care, and for the expansion of Head Start. Every latchkey child under the age of 14 should be given proper adult care before and after school and during school vacations.

It has been almost 20 years since the last child-care bill made it to the President’s desk, in 1971, only to be vetoed. What we need now is a bill that can form the foundation for an evolving national child-care policy. In signing such a bill into law, President Bush will honor two of his most important promises: to fight the war on drugs and to bring forth a kinder, gentler nation.

Comprehensive child-care does both. It is time.