A New Army of Child-Care Workers

Rosa Clement’s ticket off welfare is tucked inside a three-ring binder, the one with a see-through plastic sleeve that holds a photo of her three kids.

Inside is a plan to start her own home-based child-care business, a document she hammered out as part of a pilot project that’s molding welfare recipients into entrepreneurs. After four years on public assistance, the Huntington Beach resident looks forward to making a living helping working parents and their children.

“This is my chance,” says Clement, a soft-spoken woman whose smart suits and professional demeanor made her a standout in a recent micro-business course held for Orange County public housing residents. “This is my dream.”

The reality is that her landlord may not warm to day care on his property. She also lacks $2,000 to buy insurance, purchase toys and fix the station wagon she needs to haul her pint-sized clients to Head Start.

Such are the obstacles confronting Clement and public officials nationwide who are rushing to enlist America’s welfare population into a new army of child-care workers. Faced with a shortage of jobs and insufficient day care to meet the demands of federal welfare reform, communities nationwide have seized on a strategy to tackle both problems at once.

Welfare-to-day-care training is being tried in at least 29 states, including more than half of California’s 58 counties. Los Angeles County officials are gearing up for a fall campaign to recruit hundreds of new at-home providers, some of whom will come straight from the welfare rolls. Across the country, day-care centers are hiring thousands more workers off the dole.

It’s too soon to tell how many of these efforts will succeed, but industry veterans warn that the transition won’t be easy. While eager candidates like Clement scramble for start-up funds, others turn to the profession as the employer of last resort. Experts worry that quality will be compromised in the mad dash to convert aid recipients to caregivers. And they doubt that many poor women will escape poverty in an industry known for low wages and high turnover.

“A lot of people are saying let’s kill two birds with one stone and tap these people as a source of good, cheap child care,” said Marcy Whitebook, co-director of the Center for the Child Care Workforce in Washington. “But there is no quick and dirty fix. Bringing people on welfare into this occupation without intense support and training . . . means you are probably dooming them to failure. That has real consequences for the kids and for all of us.”

Among the thorniest questions arising from America’s great welfare-to-work experiment is: Who’s going to watch the children? More than 500,000 Californians are slated to move from welfare to work over the next few years. Between them they’ve got 1.5 million children, half of them under age 6. It’s a baby boom that promises to add to the $1.2 billion of public funds that California spent on child care last year.

Welfare moms need jobs. Their kids need care. Public officials are playing matchmaker by linking those needs.

“We have a mandate to get everyone equipped to go to work,” said state Sen. John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara), who has been active in welfare-to-work policy. “Finding them a job where they can be with their kids is one solution.”

Thus California, like other states, is experimenting with an array of programs to train aid recipients to care for children in their homes or in established day-care centers.

These efforts include state-funded welfare-to-day-care pilots in 29 counties, from San Diego in the south to Del Norte on the Oregon border. The Department of Education is bankrolling three test projects to transform aid recipients into teachers at day-care centers. Private, nonprofit organizations such as the Women’s Enterprise Development Corp. in Long Beach and the International Child Resource Institute in Berkeley also have entered the fray with help for welfare mothers interested in starting their own home-based child-care businesses.

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Undoubtedly the most ambitious effort will kick off this fall, when Los Angeles County begins recruiting home-based providers to plug a projected shortfall of 150,000 day-care slots. That’s a deficit bigger than that of most states.

The situation is so complex that local officials really aren’t certain how many providers they need or where they’re needed. A recently commissioned census should help when it is completed next spring. In the meantime, officials are canvassing churches and neighborhood organizations for prospective caregivers, particularly in low-income, immigrant communities. A media blitz is planned for the fall.

“We’re going to need a lot [of new providers], and some of them may well be welfare recipients,” said Kathy Malaske-Samu, child-care coordinator for Los Angeles County. “The welfare rolls are being reduced every month . . . so we’ve got to move quickly.”

As an enticement, the first 1,700 new providers will receive up to $250 worth of toys, smoke alarms and other start-up equipment in exchange for attending about eight hours of county-sponsored classes. State licensing, which allows providers legally to care for as many as eight young children on their own, requires an additional 15 hours of health and safety training. Local officials plan to link recruits with other agencies that can provide that.

“We want to make sure we’re getting quality providers,” said Jan Isenberg, a consultant with the Los Angeles County Office of Education, who is overseeing the training portion of the recruitment drive.

Critics are skeptical that a few hours of classes and some fire extinguishers will prepare poor women for the demands of self-employment. As for quality, they note that California law doesn’t require licensed home-based providers to take a single hour of childhood development training. So-called “license exempt” caregivers, typically a relative or neighbor watching the children of one family besides their own, do not need any training to qualify for public child-care subsidies.

“Everything in the way this system is constructed minimizes education and training,” said Susan Berke Fogel, legal director for the California Women’s Law Center. “It’s not enough to rush women through some fast-track class and expect them to become good child-care providers.”

But what galls Fogel and other advocates most is what they see as the ideology driving the whole welfare-to-child-care movement: The assumption that welfare mothers are perfect for day-care jobs because anyone who has changed a diaper can do it.

“The implication is that this work is easy. That anybody can baby-sit . . . especially if they have the right biological parts,” said Whitebook of the Center for the Child Care Workforce. “Certainly there are talented people on welfare who would be good child-care workers. The question is what do you have to do to make that happen?”

Study after study has shown that educated caregivers are more effective than those who have never cracked a book on childhood development. But running a successful home-based center requires entrepreneurial skills. Nearly one-quarter of California’s 42,000 licensed family day-care providers will go out of business this year--many of them because their operators have no clue about marketing, taxes or financing.

In a classroom next door to a Santa Ana metal fabricator, a group of would-be providers is learning that even Mary Poppins couldn’t cut it without a business plan, some start-up capital and the chops to get parents to pay on time.

“You are in business to make money,” Carmen Elliott, a former welfare mother turned tough-love trainer, reminds the mostly female assemblage. “That’s why we’re doing this.”

Welcome to Self-Employment 101, otherwise known as Family Social Services Micro Business Basics. Funded by the Orange County Housing Authority, the pilot project was created to give aid recipients an alternative to dead-end jobs by helping them become self-employed. About 30 students attended the recent monthlong course on entrepreneurial survival skills, about one-third of whom are interested in child-care careers.

It is here that Clement cobbled together the plan for her “‘Mommy Rose” home day-care business. Now 34, she landed on the dole after a marriage soured and a long struggle to raise three children on a tiny clerical paycheck. Welfare is unwelcome territory for this polite, religious woman. Clement often does her grocery shopping in the middle of the night so no one will see her food stamps.

“Scared to get off welfare?” she says almost in a whisper. “I’m scared to stay on it.”

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Like a lamp at the top of the cellar steps, her business plan shows the way out. Her strategy is to take in seven children who will bring $2,500 a month into her household. That’s a comfortable living even after taxes and expenses. Plus she will be home for her school-age children and doing work that she loves.

However, industry salary figures aren’t as optimistic as Clement’s projections. The median wage for family child-care providers is $118 for a 35-hour week, according to 1996 figures from the Census Bureau. That works out to $3.37 an hour for one of the most demanding jobs on the planet.

“It looks good on paper, but the reality is that many women doing this aren’t even making minimum wage,” said Giovanna Stark, executive director of the state Child Development Policy Advisory Committee in Sacramento. “Some of them will get off welfare. But for how long?”

Then there’s the matter of start-up funding. Like any would-be entrepreneur on welfare, Clement has no savings to speak of and no home equity line to tap. Still, she’s luckier than most because she may be able to secure capital through the Micro Enterprise Loan Program of Orange County, a tiny nonprofit helping low-income people pull themselves up through self-employment.

The agency recently received $75,000 in grant funds, and has put Clement and her fellow class members on the fast track to obtain loans. But Executive Director Diane Lichterman will tell you that she had to twist plenty of arms to make it happen.

“I thought I’d be the most popular person in Orange County when we started this thing,” said Lichterman. “But it has been incredibly tough. I’ve got a waiting list as long as your arm of poor folks who want training or a little money to get started. Who’s going to help them?”

Other welfare-to-child-care programs are pulling all the resources together in a bid to give aid recipients--and their young charges--the tools they need to thrive.

In Philadelphia, the YMCA runs a one-stop family day-care program that takes low-income women through every phase of starting a business. In addition to child development training, health and safety classes, business basics and one-on-one mentoring, the eight-month program pays all licensing costs and provides up to $1,500 for beds, toys and other equipment. The project is financed largely by foundations, but last year it began receiving funds from Pennsylvania to provide a condensed version for welfare recipients.

About 250 women have completed the training since the program was founded seven years ago, said senior project director Lola Rooney. She couldn’t say how many went on to start their own businesses. But about one-third now belong to a network of active providers who receive ongoing training and technical assistance.

“You can’t set them up and just walk away,” Rooney said. “This is a demanding and isolating job. They need that support.”

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Colorado is funding 10 separate pilot programs that likewise provide extensive training and start-up funds. The 177 participants were chosen after an assessment to measure their true interest in working with children, said Oxana Golden, who is directing the state’s child-care efforts.

That is a major concern among welfare-to-child-care critics, who contend that poor women are being pressured into day-care jobs--either directly by their caseworkers or indirectly by the knowledge that their benefits are being cut off.

Social service officials here and elsewhere deny it, noting that the programs are strictly voluntary. But participants will tell you that some women are just going through the motions to meet requirements set down by welfare reform.

Philadelphia day-care provider Regina Ware said that more than half of the 30 welfare recipients who entered the YMCA program with her last year dropped out before completing the training.

“They were just there because they had to be,” she said. “It wasn’t hard to tell who was serious and who wasn’t.”

Meanwhile, more than 35% of day-care centers nationwide have hired someone off welfare--including 80% of commercial chains, according to a report by the Center for the Child Care Workforce.

That would appear to be an admirable accomplishment considering the near-patriotic fervor attached to hiring someone off the dole. However, the study shows that centers hiring the most aid recipients are also the most likely to pay lower wages and experience higher turnover--big hurdles for anyone trying to escape poverty.

Advocates say that child care will never pay a living wage until society puts more value on children. Clement knows all about that priority. It’s why she’s so determined to make good on her plan.

“I’m going to find a way to make this business work. I’ve got to,” she says. “My kids are depending on me.”

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Salary Check

What’s a child care provider worth? Not much, according to national labor statistics, which reveal that a fast food cook makes more per hour than an at-home day care operator. One can also earn more tending animals than children.

Occupation: Median hourly wage*

Home care provider: $3.37

Fast food cook: $5.48

Child care worker: $6.12

Parking lot attendant: $6.38

Veterinary assistant: $7.34

Preschool teacher: $7.80

Data entry clerk: $8.50

Delivery driver: $10.61

Secretary: $9.20

Bus driver: $11.56

* A median wage indicates that half the workers in an occupation earn wages below this figure, while half make more.

Source: Center for the Child Care Workforce: U.S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Statistics; U.S. Census Bureau