SOUTH BAY / COVER STORY : Night Watch : Parents who work non-traditional hours are turning to such evening child care programs as one at the Torrance Y for help. Providers seek to create a feeling of family.

It looks like dinner hour in any big family. Christopher, 8, passes out the paper dinner plates, Briana, 7, and Kaylee, 3, organize the plastic silverware. Altogether, six children sit down together to eat.

It’s family style, but the children aren’t at home.

During their meal of fish sticks, scalloped potatoes and salad, Cathryn Steven, 27, gently reminds them to stop kicking each other under the table and to try a bite of everything.

They are at the new YWCA Home Away From Home Evening Care program, where Steven and the staff have created the first nighttime child care available in the South Bay outside private homes.

As more families depend on a single parent or need both parents to work non-traditional hours, the need for flexible child care has increased.

Parents who work at night in refineries, restaurants, hospitals, police departments or the post office are just a few examples of those who need help with their children at night. Experts agree that the best place for a child to sleep is probably in his or her own bed, but not all parents can be at home. The next-best thing seems to be care-givers who create the feeling of family--albeit a big family.

Typically, grandparents or older siblings have cared for children while parents work. Sometimes parents could also find child care in someone’s home.

But often tenuous arrangements for evening child care fail, leaving parents desperate. A study by Mobil Oil Corp. found that night-shift employees at its Torrance refinery had their share of problems.

One divorced father has primary custody of his 7- and 8-year-old sons. Once, when his baby-sitter didn’t show up, he brought his children to sleep in his car in the parking lot during his 12-hour graveyard shift. Another time he decided to leave the children home alone, but panicked when he called them about 7 p.m. and got no answer. He rushed home to find them fast asleep.

One mom arranged for her son’s preschool teacher to drop him off at the Mobil parking lot, leaving him in her pickup truck. When she got out to the lot, the 5-year-old wasn’t there. Because another mother was late picking up her child, the teacher couldn’t get away for more than half an hour. The Mobil worker said it was the most horrible feeling, not knowing where her child was.

With more than 400 employees at its Torrance refinery on rotating schedules that include nights and weekends, Mobil found that the company was suffering because of child-care complications like these. A study sponsored by the company found that it could save an average of $6,000 a month if it could curb absenteeism caused by child-care problems.

Mobil approached the Torrance YWCA to create a way to help parents cope with child care. The first step, a traditional preschool, opened in September, 1993. Mobil spent about $50,000 in labor and materials to construct the portable building that houses the daytime and evening care programs.

Since it opened Sept. 14, the evening care program has registered more than 20 children. Parents can bring little ones to the Carson Street building from 3 p.m. to midnight Monday through Friday. The program accepts children 2 to 14.

The staff strives to create an orderly but relaxed mood.

“It’s not pizza in front of the TV,” says YWCA child care director Rebecca Jessop. “It’s more structured, with a home atmosphere.”

Each week the group’s activities follow a theme. One week the subject was fall, so one day the children made leaf collages, the next they studied the changes in the trees on the playground, and on the third day they painted with fall colors--yellow, brown and orange.

Children bring pajamas, a towel, a toothbrush and bedding. Bedtime depends on the child’s age. YWCA staff say the most important thing is to keep the children stimulated but provide a comfortable environment.

For evening care the YWCA charges $4.50 to $5.50 an hour for one or two children and $2.50 an hour for each additional child. Dinner costs $3 per child.

Because nurses work around the clock, much of the experience with evening child-care centers has been at hospitals.

One company that used to offer its employees evening child care was Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles. For 10 years, the nurses on night shift could bring their youngsters to a conference room at the hospital for overnight care. When the furniture was shifted out of the way, children from 3 months to 16 years would camp out between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m.

“The nice part about it was that your child was here,” said Ellen Zaman, director of patient family services for the hospital. “But there are a lot of people who see a down side to night care, because the child has to be (awakened) very early in the morning.”

Besides having to move their beds and toys out of the way each day, the children washed, had breakfast and got ready for school at the hospital.

“From a developmental standpoint, you don’t have much of a family life if you are on site with your parent,” Zaman said.

When costs forced the hospital to charge for the sleep-over care, participants dropped from 40 to 20. Last fall, the hospital discontinued the program and put all of its resources into daytime care, Zaman said.

Many parents feel that the best possible solution when they have to work evening hours is to find another home where their children can stay.

In the South Bay, parents can find home-based evening child care through state-funded referral lines and private associations of home-care providers. These groups offer referrals to their members, but relatively few of the home-care providers offer evening hours. Of the 80 members of the South Bay Child Care Assn., for example, only five offer evening care.

When Kathi Darling started tending bar and taking paralegal classes at night, finding someone to trust with her baby presented a problem. Darling is separated from the boy’s father, and the rest of her family lives in Northern California.

Where could she take the cherubic 15-month-old?

“When you’re looking for someone who’ll let you show up at 3 in the morning to pick him up, they’re hard to find,” Darling said.

The answer turned out to be Kathy Harrison-Imel, another single mom who has her own toddler and does evening care in her home. Harrison-Imel is listed with several of the South Bay referral lines.

Spurred by the same problem, Harrison-Imel had decided that if she couldn’t find evening care for her daughter, Brittany, others might need help too. So about six months ago, she got a state license to care for children in her home. Now she specializes in evening and weekend care.

Mary Holmstedt is another home-based evening care provider. She estimates that hundreds of children have spent time at her home preschool and evening care center in the 15 years she has been open. Their smiling pictures hang all over her house.

A huge castle, complete with turret and slide, dominates the main room, making Holmstedt’s house look a bit like a Little Tikes distributorship. The toy manufacturer’s play stations--a workbench with plastic tools, an easel, stove, sink and cupboard and a beauty parlor set--take up every inch of space along the walls in the room where the children play.

But even with all the activity, the house has a sense of order and calm, with Holmstedt smoothing the way. She instructs the children to put back one play set before getting out another, and helps them resolve fights over toys with apologies and good humor.

Holmstedt has cared for children in her Torrance home day and night since 1979, when her own daughter needed someone to watch her twins as she worked rotating shifts for the Los Angeles Police Department.

About five nights a week Holmstedt has children in the evening, and her daytime preschool almost always has a waiting list for one of the 12 spots.

Ashley, a vivacious 22-month-old-with tiny dimples and pigtails, has a mom who drives a bus on a split shift. Ashley stays with the Holmstedts several days a week, sometimes starting as early as 4 a.m., and at other times remaining until late evening.

Like Holmstedt’s daughter, many of the parents who need evening care come from law enforcement. Her current roster includes the children of Torrance and Los Angeles police officers and sheriff’s deputies.

California law requires in-home day-care providers to get a license. Their homes are inspected for safety, and they must take 15 hours of instruction each year in CPR, first aid and infectious diseases. Each provider can care for up to six children alone, or 12 with an aide, and the care cannot last more than 24 hours. For evening care the rules are the same, although the inspector will also look for comfortable places for the children to sleep, said Sallee Kraics of the state Department of Social Services.

Both the YWCA and home providers stress that the tone of evening care has to be different.

Mary Holmstedt and her husband encourage the children to call them Nana and Papa.

“That’s what we’re trying to show them, that we’re an extension of their family. They’re a part of it, so they can relax,” Holmstedt says.

The affectionate names reveal another reason home care is popular. Many families live far away from the traditional supports of grandparents and other family members.

Most evening-care providers try to create the feeling of family and community while winding down the day. Many of the children have been in preschools earlier in the day, and need a change of pace, experts say.

*

“Anything that you could create that would be as homelike as possible would give the children a sense of comfort,” says Cynthia Whitham, a staff therapist in UCLA’s parent training program. What children need, Whitham says, is a comforting atmosphere and a sense of structure.

Laura Escobedo, associate director of the Child Care Resource Center in North Hollywood, agrees. Her agency gets more than 40 calls a month for referrals to evening child care.

Most parents feel home care is like taking their children to a relative’s house rather than an institution, Escobedo says.

“I think that’s what makes it feel the most comfortable. Besides being a safe place, the child isn’t missing out on the intimacies of settling down for the night,” Escobedo says. “It kind of gives closure to the day.”

While the need for evening child care appears to be growing, the high cost of paying providers will probably limit the number of public evening care programs.

“Even though it’s crucial for the people who need it, it is a very small number compared to the overall demand,” Escobedo said. “It isn’t cost-effective for most centers to offer evening programs.”

*

But some organizations recognize they need child care at night, especially if they are trying to attract women workers. Last month, the Los Angeles Women Police Officer’s Assn. announced it would start raising funds for a 24-hour child care center Downtown. The group hopes the center will be the first of four that will serve the children of LAPD employees.

And, despite the challenges of financing evening care, the YWCA is committed to going to a 24-hour schedule, starting next spring.

Next year the children gathered around the table may be eating scrambled eggs and breakfast cereal together, in addition to their evening meal of fish sticks and scalloped potatoes.

KEN HIVELY / Los Angeles Times