Collaborating on Care : Employers Team Up on Programs for Dependents
Unlike millions of other American working parents, Cindy Farrow doesn’t worry about child care.
Her employer, National Medical Enterprises, runs a preschool child care center in Santa Monica where Farrow drops off her 2-year-old daughter, Alexandra, on workdays. Farrow says that even when she works into the evening or travels, she knows that Alexandra will be safe and involved in activities she enjoys at the NME center.
“Once I drop her off in the morning . . . sometimes I don’t think of her again until I pick her up at the end of the day,” Farrow said. “I just wish they would do it until she’s 21!”
Although NME won’t go that far, it is planning to add afternoon and vacation programs for schoolchildren as part of a ground-breaking, coast-to-coast effort by a group of 137 big employers, government agencies and other organizations.
The loosely structured group, known as the American Business Collaboration for Quality Dependent Care, has raised $25.4 million to launch or expand child and elder care programs in Southern California and more than 40 other areas. Details of the initiative, which began to leak out in July, were announced officially by the consortium on Thursday.
Experts say the initiative is the first nationwide effort by a business group to help employees with the burden of arranging care for their children and aging parents during their working hours.
The experts say the effort also signals that many leading businesses, hoping to boost their productivity, are serious about dealing with a critical shortage of child and elder care programs--even at a time when other employee benefits are being cut.
Among parents fortunate enough to have such benefits already, child care and elder care are cherished. “If someone said to me that we have to eliminate free parking, the cafeteria, the gym or day care, I’d say you could take it all, just leave me the day care,” Farrow said. As manager of benefits systems for NME, Farrow said she hears similar sentiments from co-workers.
The ABC programs mainly will serve employees of businesses in the consortium, but organizers said the efforts could indirectly help other workers by expanding the array of services in many communities.
Yet even at companies participating in the consortium, many of which already have extensive family support programs, the new programs are unlikely to fulfill all of the demand from working parents.
Sheila B. Kamerman, a social policy expert at Columbia University in New York, said there is enormous demand nationwide for more child care, as nearly 60% of U.S. mothers with children under age 6 are in the labor force.
Kamerman also noted that while more than 100 nations help working parents by providing paid leaves of absence for women who have recently given birth, the United States has no such policy.
Congress sent President Bush on Thursday a measure that would provide 12-week, unpaid leaves for a working parent to care for a newborn or a seriously ill family member, but he is expected to veto the bill.
The consortium “is another example of how U.S. companies are taking on new roles that in other industrial societies are unheard of or unnecessary” because of foreign government policies, said Bradley K. Googins, director of the Center on Work and Family at Boston University.
Googins also noted that major companies that ordinarily compete with each other are working together in the consortium, which he said was a reflection of the depth of the nation’s dependent care problems.
ABC will support 300 projects, almost all of which are in the early planning stages. They include at-home programs for the elderly, training for dependent care providers, the construction of 10 new day care centers and the expansion of 15 more.
Additional projects could be offered as more employers join the consortium and contribute money. The consortium began early last year as the brainchild of IBM, which eventually recruited 10 other major companies with employees across the country to lead the effort.
Another 98 companies--mainly smaller firms with localized child and elder care needs--and 28 government agencies, associations and other organizations have also joined the effort.
One of the few projects already underway is in San Diego, where IBM and Target Stores will spend $120,000 to expand a training program for child care workers and add parent education classes. Nancy B. Mitchell, who directs training and referral services for YMCA Childcare Resource Service in San Diego, said the funds will pay for 16-hour or 32-hour training courses for about 250 people over the next year.
Consortium Highlights
The American Business Collaboration for Quality Dependent Care is a consortium of 137 big employers, government agencies and other organizations. It has raised $25.4 million to provide new and expanded child care and elder care programs in 44 communities from coast to coast.
Leadership: Eleven major companies head the group: Allstate Insurance, American Express, Amoco, AT&T;, Exxon, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Eastman Kodak, Motorola, The Travelers and Xerox.
Local Projects: In the Los Angeles area, five programs costing a total of $430,400 are planned. Sponsors are American Express, AT&T;, Cigna, Conde Nast Publications, Continental Insurance, Home Box Office, IBM, National Medical Enterprises, Time Warner and Transamerica Life. In Orange County, two projects costing $212,500 are slated, sponsored by AT&T;, Bergen Brunswig, IBM, The Travelers and Western Digital. San Diego has a $120,000 training program backed by Target Stores and IBM.
For more information: Call Work/Family Directions, a consulting firm working with the consortium, at 1-800-253-5264, extension 4283.
