PARENTAL HEADACHE NO. 2 : When Need Is Great, State Steps In

Single parents, low-income parents and parents of disabled children have an especially hard time finding day care. Michelle McKinney, 24, is all three.

Five years ago, her son, DaMeaun, was born weighing one pound. When DaMeaun came home five months later, McKinney quit her job. With his problems--vision, speech and hearing difficulties, and severe asthma--the only care she could find cost $100 a week. She was bringing home $400 every two weeks as a clerical worker.

Two years later, Tatiana was born. By then, McKinney was ready to leave her boyfriend, who abused her.

She got a job that paid $1,700 a month and eventually saved enough money for first and last month’s rent on an apartment. She found a one-bedroom place in Reseda for $515 a month, but with child care costing $500 a month, plus food, car payments and insurance, she still couldn’t afford to move out and leave her boyfriend.

She had been on a waiting list for subsidized child care at her local resource and referral agency, the Child Care Resource Center, for two years when she finally called the center in hysterics.

“I said, ‘I have been on your waiting list literally for years,’ ” she said. “ ‘Somebody has to be able to help me.’ I told them about the abusive relationship and how I wanted to leave, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know if you were in an abusive situation or if you had a sick child that you would go into a different program.”

(Abused or disabled children get top priority for state subsidies.)

Now, the state pays for DaMeaun to spend mornings in a special school and afternoons at day care with his 3-year-old sister.

McKinney is working, attends college when she can and dreams of becoming a lawyer.

“I try not to say, ‘God, everything happens to me,’ because if I take time to think about it, then it will be like this big balloon I can’t hold. I just have to deal with one situation at a time.”