A Subsidy for the Children : Thousand Oaks Helps Preschool Provide Child Care for Low-Income Families

As Deborah Saier’s marriage fell apart, she wondered how she could afford daytime child care for her two young children.

Meredith, now 5, and Cameron, 4, had been enrolled in the Roots and Wings child-care center in Thousand Oaks, spending five days a week playing and learning with other children while both their parents worked. Now, Saier, an employment training specialist with the county, had to pay for much of their care by herself.

Then, Roots and Wings owner Sherri Laboon showed Saier how to qualify for a state program that pays child-care costs for low-income families. The support allowed Saier’s children to stay at the center, sparing them another disruption in their lives.

“When you divide the family, you

divide the finances, so I would have been in a crisis situation if Sherri hadn’t come up with this,” Saier said.

The kind of help Saier’s children now receive will soon become available to more Conejo Valley families. Thousand Oaks city leaders have won a $65,000 annual grant from the state’s Department of Education to provide subsidized, preschool care to 20 local children.

But if the city has the money to care for the kids, it does not yet have a permanent place to put them. Last year, the City Council approved a plan to convert a senior center on Conejo School Road into a child-care facility, to be owned by the city and run by Roots and Wings. But the new center will not open until next year.

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So earlier this month council members tentatively approved a way to care for the 20 grant recipients until the new center is ready. The city will lend Roots and Wings up to $55,000 to build a 1,000-square-foot addition to one of its current facilities, enough space to accommodate the 20 children. Also, the city will give Laboon a grant covering the costs--still undetermined--of making the building accessible to the handicapped.

Council members see the step as one way to meet what they believe is increasing need in Thousand Oaks.

“Affordable child care for single parents and lower-income families is a difficult commodity to come by, and that’s a growing concern,” Councilwoman Judy Lazar said.

Although city leaders do not know for certain how many Conejo Valley families need professional child care, a 1993 study found the demand far outstripped the local supply. The survey, conducted by Child Care Planning Associates of Irvine, estimated that at least 10,600 Thousand Oaks children had working parents and needed some type of daytime care. Local child-care programs, however, provided a total of just 2,250 spaces.

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A study released last week by the U.S. Census Bureau found that more than half of the nation’s 19.7 million children under the age of 5 needed daytime care in 1993. Of those, 30% spent weekdays in child-care facilities outside the home.

Finding quality care is even more difficult for low-income families. In Thousand Oaks, 311 families receive federal aid to feed and clothe their children, said Saier, who works in the county’s Workforce Development Department. Working parents who rely on the federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, she said, can find few affordable programs for their children.

“We need far more [spaces] based on the AFDC families alone,” Saier said. “And we’re not addressing the people who aren’t on AFDC but are just barely making it.”

Children whose families qualify for state aid get three free hours of preschool, five days a week. At Roots and Wings, teachers read to the children, take them to plays and concerts at the Civic Arts Plaza and help Spanish-speaking kids learn English.

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For parents who work all day, state support will only go part of the way. Debbie MacPherson’s 5-year-old son, Brock, spends a full day at the Roots and Wings center on Calle Tulipan, in the building slated for expansion.

Although MacPherson and her husband, Bruce, have to pay for Brock’s afternoons at the center, the state support makes his attendance possible. Without it, the $80 monthly cost for Brock’s care would balloon to $395.

“It’s made the difference between keeping him there and taking him out,” she said.

Laboon said the need for low-cost care is the reason she became involved with the city’s effort to create the new facility and provide the subsidized spaces.

“If you’d seen as many parents as I’ve seen cry on the phone when you tell them they can get child care for free, it would change your mind about what’s important in life,” she said.