Just Like Home? : Almost Anyone Can Offer Family Day Care, but Quality Is Hard to Monitor

You’d never guess from the outside of this old-fashioned Venice four-plex that a business is thriving behind one of the doors. It is such a tiny apartment. It is so quiet. It is naptime.

But about 3:30 p.m. on any weekday, the smallest children are beginning to stir in Suzanne Butorac’s living room, where they are slumbering on mats. The older ones, Vanessa and Jessie, both 5, are already up and in the bedroom playing with Nick, 4.

Three-and-a-half-year-old Alex is still asleep in the living room, but 21-month-old Jordan is awake and whimpering to be held. That’s no problem for Butorac, who is already cradling 6-week-old Rosie in her arms. She sits down and offers a knee to Jordan, who climbs up and plants his face in the crook of her neck as she hugs him with her free arm.

Butorac runs a family day-care home out of the one-bedroom, 750-square-foot apartment she shares with her husband, Frank. She is 43, childless, and a parent’s dream: Several years ago, after a planned adoption fell through, she decided against trying again because she couldn’t stand the thought of having to give up one of her day-care kids. She is dearly beloved by the children she cares for and by their parents. Not even her neighbors seem to mind that five days a week, 50 weeks a year, the apartment is home to half a dozen tykes.

“She is an amazing person,” said attorney Diana Statman, mother of Alex and Rosie. “She is always happy. The kids are always happy. She is always immaculate, her house is immaculate, the kids never have runny noses, they are always clean. And it’s not like she doesn’t do anything with them. They are always at the beach or the park.”

In fact, it’s one of the endearing sights in the neighborhood: Every day at 10 a.m., mother duck Butorac walks to the park and her ducklings waddle along in her wake.

In January, 1990, as part of its effort to make Los Angeles a child-care-friendly city, the City Council passed a law making family day care, where people care for children in their homes, a “by right” use of property. Anyone without a criminal record and who has a clean bill of health and a home that meets standards of cleanliness and safety can offer family day care.

This is why finding family day care can be so traumatic for parents. While Butorac is any parent’s dream, the average experience can be much more traumatic.

The standards are such that there are no guarantees that a family-care home is a quality setting for a child. One provider may keep the television on all day, smoke in the house or swat toddlers for wetting their pants. Another may have studied child development and offer daily outings to the park and art projects. One provider may burn out after one year on the job because of the low pay and long hours, while others may thrive on running their own businesses.

The onus falls squarely on parents to satisfy themselves that their children are receiving good care.

Liberalized Law

Experts say there are plenty of family day-care homes in Los Angeles, but there are not plenty of licensed homes. Some estimate that nine-tenths of all family-care homes nationwide are unlicensed.

Most licensed homes--there are about 7,100 in the county--are permitted to have up to six children and are required to have only one adult present. Twelve percent of the homes serve up to 12 children and are required to have at least two supervising staff.

The City Council eliminated the need for permits and hearings and made family day care an automatically lawful use of the home to bring the municipal code into conformity with state law. Before it did, though, there were some fierce arguments against it, said Patsy Lane, the city’s child-care coordinator.

Some homeowner associations argued that it would be a business intrusion on residential neighborhoods.

“I was at a hearing once and heard someone (in favor of family day care) say, ‘You know, you go to these hearings, and it sounds like kids are nothing but noise covered with dirt!’ ” said Lane. Protesters “would talk about lower property values, noise, traffic, business intrusion, ‘It will make my dog bark,’ ‘I sleep during the day,’ etc.

“Homes are typically for kids. . . . A person who has six children of their own doesn’t have to be licensed!”

The city was routinely approving more than 90% of the requests for licenses, at considerable administrative cost, so officials decided it made sense to liberalize the law. After the new law went into effect, the volume of inquiries from people interested in starting family-care homes doubled, said Lane.

(Two public-interest law groups have joined forces to make sure all cities in Los Angeles County comply with the 1983 state law that precludes them from regulating family day care. Since last year, the Southern California Women’s Law Center and Public Counsel have been notifying the county’s 85 cities, other than Los Angeles, that their ordinances are not in compliance with state law.)

The Community Care Licensing Division of the California Department of Social Services regulates the industry. Homes receive one pre-licensing visit and then one unannounced visit when the license comes up for renewal every three years. The pre-licensing visit covers such things as making sure that knives are out of reach and that cabinets are child-proof. Care-givers are not required to carry liability insurance, but they are required to advise parents of this fact. The division makes spot checks only when there are complaints.

Because so little is known about the overall quality of family day care, most information is anecdotal. A high-quality provider usually doesn’t lack for business because parents spread the news to other parents.

This is why Butorac, who has been in business five years, has never advertised and has never had trouble filling her slots. Two of her parents are expecting and both have begged her to take their babies. She will have room for only one.

“I feel lucky,” said Diana Statman, who takes both her children to Butorac. “I feel completely comfortable giving my kids over to her.”

Carollee Howes, a professor in the UCLA Department of Education, has studied family day care and said it is impossible to generalize about quality.

“I have seen fabulous family day-care homes and I have seen horrible ones,” she said. “It is very difficult for parents. (Family day care) is a very private environment. It is hard for them to know what is going on. A lot of people that I would consider (as being in the family day-care business) don’t even know what they are doing.”

Attempts are being made to address the uneven quality of care. The Dayton Hudson Foundation and its Target and Mervyn’s stores have committed $8 million over four years to develop national quality standards for family day care, to recruit and train family providers, and to educate parents about good quality care. The “Family-to-Family” grants will be spread among 17 communities nationwide.

Locally, the San Fernando Valley’s Child Care Resource Center has received one of the grants ($230,000), which will be used to recruit and train family day-care providers in the Valley. Lorraine Schrag, the resource center’s executive director, estimated that, over three years, between 430 and 450 new providers can be trained with the funds.

Starting in September, the effect of the training will be studied by the Families and Work Institute, a nonprofit New York clearinghouse that researches the balance between jobs and family life.

“Right now, we know nothing about what is happening to children in family day care, nothing about the quality,” said Ellen Galinsky, the institute’s co-president. The institute will also study the effects of the Dayton Hudson grants in two other communities--Charlotte, N.C., and Dallas, Tex.

“We will know the ways in which the training affects the quality,” added Galinsky. “We will assess the quality of homes before and after the training.”

Demanding Vocation

While finding quality day care is a difficult task for parents, delivering it is equally arduous for providers. Because family-care homes are not subject to much regulation, people often get the mistaken idea that they can turn an easy buck. In fact, providing child care is demanding and draining, and the pay is relatively low, which is why the annual turnover of family-care providers is estimated to be 60% a year.

Suzanne Butorac, for instance, grossed $26,000 in 1989, working 10- and 12-hour days with two weeks vacation. She charges $4 an hour per child, and $6 an hour for two siblings, which is well above the 1990 countywide average of about $2.75 per hour. Her first children arrive at 8 a.m., and until recently, the last child was not picked up until 7 p.m. Now she closes at 6, but she is flexible: If parents are late, she doesn’t usually charge extra.

Many family-care providers feel isolated because they spend all day with small children. The long hours and loneliness drove Irene Smith of West Hills out of the business in 1990 after three years.

“I had always wanted to try my own business to see how it was to be my own boss,” she said. She had no trouble filling her six slots and kept the same children for most of the time. But as the children grew older and more demanding, Smith said she began to feel burned out: “All of a sudden, they start with the ‘Why, why, why?’

“I needed more adult conversation during the day,” she said. “I felt isolated. I wanted to be able to go out for lunch, to dress up for work. (But) I am glad I did it.”

Mike Bailey, who operates a 12-child family-care home as well as a for-profit resource and referral agency called Child Care Connection out of his Northridge home, advises family-care providers on how to run their businesses. He said it is a low-overhead industry with great tax breaks. The first obstacle to overcome, he said, is emotional.

“When people consider getting into family day care, the most negative imagery pops into their minds,” said Bailey, as 12 children napped on cots in his living room. “They imagine 30 screaming children ripping the drapes off the walls. I prefer to take a more progressive view of it. You’ve heard of cocooning? I look at this as the epitome of the cocooning experience.”

A family-care home is easy to start, Bailey said. Because there are no minimum space requirements, it can theoretically be operated out of a studio apartment. Bailey holds seminars for family-care providers, teaching them to navigate the tax laws to their advantage. For instance, a provider can write off a percentage of the expense of his or her entire home because the rooms do not have to be used exclusively for business.

“Say you use half the house, half of the day, seven days a week; you can write off 50% of utilities, property taxes or rent,” said Bailey. “It is a dynamite business for renters because you can get a write-off that approaches the benefit you get on the home mortgage-interest write off.” (Under city law, landlords do not have the right to prohibit family day care.)

Butorac hasn’t experienced a lot of the problems associated with family day-care burnout. She doesn’t feel isolated. She doesn’t miss communing with adults. In fact, she says, the parents of her charges are her closest friends.

“I go to these meetings with other care-givers and they say, ‘What do you do when a father comes and he’s drunk? Or they don’t pay and you have to take them to small claims court? I have never had a problem like that. I have been really, really lucky.”

The Series at a Glance

SUNDAY: Los Angeles is rated as a top city for child care, but is it really? There are critical shortages for children of certain ages. Quality is next to impossible to monitor. And, as working parents quickly discover, child care eats up a huge portion of the family budget.

MONDAY: What has America done for its children lately? Last year, Congress passed major legislation appropriating millions for child care--but some say it’s only a drop in the bucket.

TUESDAY: Many companies express an interest in helping employees with child care, but very few offer the ultimate: on-site centers. The city of Los Angeles and TRW are two employers who believe children and the workplace are not incompatible.

TODAY: Every day, thousands of Los Angeles children are dropped off at private homes for family day care. Only a small percentage of homes are licensed, and no one really knows what kind of care is delivered behind closed doors.

THURSDAY: Finding child care is a desperate search for many families. But some parents in Mount Washington have joined forces to create their own parent-run child-care center. It won’t be easy.

For more information on the series, call (213) 237-6569.