FOR THE KIDS : Filling a Need : Finding child care is especially daunting if your child is disabled. But two facilities in the county are providing crucial services.

If you think you’ve had a tough time finding day care, consider the plight of Susan Plander, single mother of 9-year-old Marisa, an exuberant child with physical and learning disabilities.

The last two day-care centers in which Plander enrolled Marisa were disasters for the family and the centers, according to the Camarillo mother.

“No one knew what to do with her,” she said. In one, Marisa reported that the children were mean to her; in the other, she wasn’t supervised well enough and would wander off on her own.

“She wasn’t happy,” Plander said. “Her smile and laughter were not there.”

For the past two years and three summers Plander enrolled her daughter in a special after-school day-care center offered in Camarillo by the Pleasant Valley Recreation and Park District.

Operated out of the Dizdar Recreation Center, the program caters to a mix of disabled children and regular kids. Marisa’s behavioral quirks--she’s wild sometimes, has tantrums and suffers from attention deficit--are patiently tolerated.

The center began accepting disabled children two years ago, about the time that the Easter Seal Society of Ventura County opened its before- and after-school day-care facility in Saticoy.

There are virtually no other day-care centers in the county that specifically cater to physically, mentally and emotionally disabled children. Conejo Recreation and Park District offers a wide range of after-school activities for these children, but it’s not considered day care.

Working parents report that finding such child care is a nightmare.

“The regular centers say yes to your face, and you put down your money, but when the child starts to act up--and they are going to do it--they get kicked out,” said Jackie Meyer, Oxnard mother of a 3-year-old boy born prematurely with physical and developmental problems.

Meyer, who helped coordinate a disabled-infant fair last month, has not worked since her son was born. To work 25 hours a week, nursing care for her son would have run $3,500 to $4,000 a week, she said.

Violet Green, child care director for Easter Seal Society, isn’t surprised that centers expel these children or that baby-sitters are hard to find.

“A lot of people can’t handle this,” she said, listing the problems that run from changing diapers to playing with a severely disabled child.

Easter Seal’s day-care center has enrolled 32 children, ages 5-9. Last year the waiting list had 15 names, but according to Green, the recession and loss of jobs has now whittled the list to five.

“The people in Thousand Oaks and Simi Valley are at their wits’ end,” she said. “They wish there was something closer to them.”

The center opens before school at 7 a.m. for two hours, then it resumes at 11:15 a.m. until 6 p.m. Beginning in September it will run straight through the day. Easter Seal charges $170 to $210 per month, depending on the number of hours a child is in day care.

Like the Camarillo center, Easter Seal accepts children without disabilities. They make up about one-third of the children at the center, and they come from a nearby elementary school and a private school. The rest are disabled and come from the nearby Penfield special education school or they are bused in from public schools. The majority have cerebral palsy and are in wheelchairs.

Mainstreaming the disabled children with the able children works great for all the children, staff members report.

“We’re finding we don’t know the limits of people with disabilities,” said Pat Borison, director of development and public relations at Easter Seal Society. “Our mission is for them to achieve maximum independence.”

Being around children without disabilities gives the disabled kids something to shoot for and it stimulates them. But the abled children gain something they wouldn’t get in a traditional center.

“The parents say they see a change in their children,” Green said. They have a keener awareness, more compassion and tolerance for the differences in people.

“If one of the children falls down, three will run over to aid the child,” she said. They all interact, she said, with the younger ones learning from the older.

Green, who has been involved in child care since 1966, is concerned primarily with meeting the emotional needs of each child.

“Every one of them comes in with different baggage,” she said. If one of the children seems sad, she’ll encourage others to offer hugs.

For the children in wheelchairs, the center has a lot of activities and gizmos to keep them occupied, such as tape recorders and crayons with special holders. There are even little typewriters that fit onto wheelchairs. Or, the staff might set them on the grass, and the other children will play ring around the roses around them.

For Yolanda Tibbet, the Easter Seal center has been “like a blessing.” Her 7-year-old daughter, Dana, has cerebral palsy, is confined to a wheelchair and is at the developmental stage of a 2-year-old.

Tibbet’s mother originally cared for Dana while both her parents worked. Then it became too much for the grandmother.

“She gave me a year’s notice,” Tibbet said. “I just could not find anyone. When I did find someone, she would have charged what I was making. I thought I would have to quit my job.” Then the Easter Seal center opened and she enrolled Dana, who is dropped off in Saticoy by 7:30 a.m. and picked up at 5:45 p.m.

The scene at the Pleasant Valley Recreation and Park District center is different. If you look at the children playing on the swings, slide and other outdoor equipment, it’s hard to tell that any of them are disabled.

None of the four disabled children there are in wheelchairs. Only one walks with a limp.

Christy Fuquay, a 12-year-old with Down’s syndrome, raced up and down the slide with her ever-present two sisters, while the rest of the kids built a big sandcastle and adorned it with geraniums plucked from the center’s bushes.

Other children at the center have problems ranging from attention deficit disorders to mental retardation to speech problems. Until recently, the center had an autistic child. Soon it will have a deaf child.

The center is open from 2 to 6 p.m. weekdays and all day during vacation time. During a regular day, the center takes 30 children. Attendance balloons to 65 during vacations. For after-school care, the cost is $50 for two weeks.

All the children participate in the same activities, said Noreen Powers, recreation coordinator for the after-school program. But there is an extra staff member to help give the disabled children the extra attention that they need.

“We like to mainstream them, but sometimes they can get overlooked,” Powers said.

There is more one-on-one contact with the disabled children, said Amy Foote, senior recreation leader. As for the children, they all mingle well for the most part.

“We’ll see a normal kid helping tie a shoe or helping on a craft,” she said. “We used to tell the kids (when) a disabled child was starting (day care), but lately we haven’t told them. They are accepted for who they are.”

* FYI

For more information about day care and summer camp for disabled children, contact:

* Easter Seal Society of Ventura County, 10730 Henderson Road, Saticoy, 647-1141.

* Pleasant Valley Recreation and Park District, Dizdar Recreation Center, 20 S. Glenn Drive, Camarillo, 482-2213.

* Conejo Recreation and Park District, Meadows Center, 1600 Marview Drive, Thousand Oaks, 496-2464.