Singular Solutions : A year-old support group gives parents without mates a place to find co-op child care and the means for self-improvement.

Donna Oran and Sidney Hawkes first became friendly under less than the best of circumstances.

She was hiding from an abusive mate who was also the father of her two daughters. He was an unemployed, separated father searching for a job and permanent shelter for himself and his young son.

They met each other through a mutual friend and soon formed a bond. Even more important, however, they formed a nonprofit support group in April, 1994, called the Helping Hands Society for Single Parents Inc., which claims a mailing list of more than 70 people, most of them women.

“We’re giving a sense of hope to people who have lost hope, and we’re giving them a sense of direction,” Oran says.

It’s a weighty goal for the Tarzana group that little more than a year ago was just an idea.

“There are other groups doing child care co-ops and workshops, today things. We’re looking toward tomorrow. Take me. I want to go to college so I can be worth more,” says Oran, who works for a company that takes care of plants. For that reason, Oran came up with the idea of a group that can help divorced parents improve their economic potential.

Oran was sure her idea was a good one, but she was afraid that she didn’t have the knowledge or expertise to pull it off. Hawkes liked the idea and convinced Oran that--with his computer experience--it could work.

Using a basic how-to book on starting a nonprofit organization, Oran and Hawkes created a group that provides co-op child care, clothing, book and toy exchanges, seminars and legal and medical referrals.

“This group has a lot of potential,” says Penny Monaghan of Reseda. “What I needed was to be able to have time to myself sometimes. My son needs to meet other children. We’re just women talking about the different problems we are having.”

Although the group welcomes any single parent, statistics alone indicate that a large percentage of its members will be women. A 1990 Census Bureau report shows that, in Los Angeles County, divorced women living with children outnumber divorced men living with children by a 3-1 ratio.

For many of the divorced parents who have joined Helping Hands, the opportunity to meet people in a similar situation is a priority.

To that end, Helping Hands provides support groups where parents can come together with their children. It also provides a baby-sitting co-op where parents use a voucher system instead of money to exchange child care.

The group recently held its first toy and book exchange, where one parent walked away with almost $60 in toys for her infant, Oran says. Helping Hands also sponsors picnics and seminars, such as a recent class on “Single Parents and the Legal System” led by a Glendale attorney who was once a single parent.

While the group’s support is important to the single parents who have joined, Oran and Hawkes have a loftier goal for the group: helping single parents improve their earning power.

The average income for a single mother is $21,000 a year and $29,000 for a single father, according to figures Oran says she pulled from the 1990 U.S. Census. And, for Oran and Hawkes, that is the heart of the divorced parent dilemma.

“People need to have some kind of self-impetus to better themselves,” says Hawkes, who has since found a job as a laboratory technician for Amgen in Thousand Oaks. “But they also need a safety net in the sense of, ‘I want to go to school but I need someone to watch my child at night.’ ”

Helping Hands wants to provide that safety net by offering secondary child care for people who work a second job or go to school.

Oran believes that, with the proper funding, Helping Hands will be able to turn around many lives. “If you’re going to go back to school to finish your degree, that’s going to make you worth more money in the end,” Oran says. “You will be better able financially to take care of your family.”

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WHERE AND WHEN

What: The Helping Hands Society for Single Parents Inc.

Location: P.O. Box 57271, Tarzana, 91357.

Upcoming Events: Yard sale and get-together May 20; picnic at Mar Vista Park at 11 a.m. May 21.

Call: (818) 345-6452.