County to Begin Surveying State of Day Care

To the parent who has had to drive like a bat out of hell to retrieve a child from day care before costly late fees kick in, or endured a frustrating search for quality care in far-flung locales like the Antelope Valley, or panicked when seeking child-care options for an 8-week-old, Los Angeles County wants to know: What do you need?

This summer, child-care officials here and in other counties around the state will conduct a comprehensive survey of child-care providers and legions of working parents to create the first statewide picture of child-care supply and demand.

The survey is mandated by last year’s state welfare reform legislation and requires that counties take an inventory of child care at least every five years.

“We really want to do a good, comprehensive look at what are the child-care needs,” said Maria Balakshin, director of the child development division of the state Department of Education, which will review the survey results.

“This will give us the very best data we’ve ever had.”

Some counties have informally done similar surveys, called “needs assessments,” for years. The welfare reform legislation makes them mandatory, sets minimum standards on the data to be collected and, for the first time, allows for county-by-county comparisons.

Information from the assessments, due to be completed by March, will help set child-care policy, including funding decisions, into the next millennium, local and state officials said.

CalWorks, the state’s welfare-to-work program, will push into the labor pool at least 500,000 more Californians, 60% of whom are single parents with at least one preschooler.

A 1997 study by the San Francisco-based California Child Care Resource & Referral Network questioned whether the child-care system is ready to handle the tidal wave of tiny takers. The group asserts that over the next two to three years in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys alone, there will be a “quality gap” of 130,000 child-care spaces--the difference between the number of high-quality spaces in licensed facilities and the number of youngsters, including CalWorks children, likely to need licensed care.

Some experts argue that increasing the supply of affordable, quality child care is crucial to the success of welfare reform. With that as a backdrop, officials hope to use the survey to spot the holes that need to be stitched in the existing child-care patchwork.

The new survey, the first conducted by the county since 1986, is “a bigger deal because we have welfare reform and because child care is in the middle of its 15 minutes of fame,” said Kathy Malaske-Samu, child-care coordinator for Los Angeles County. “While we’re in the spotlight, we need to make good use of that time so that when we become last year’s issue, we’ll still have an infrastructure [of data] that can then be built upon.”

If for no other reason than girth, the effort in Los Angeles County, where an estimated one in six residents is on welfare, is expected to be among the most ambitious.

But area officials plan to expand the county survey, questioning not only state-licensed child-care providers, including operators of child-care centers and family day-care homes, but also license-exempt options, such as Boys & Girls Clubs and after-school programs.

In L.A. County, workers will attempt to assess the need from ground zero, fanning out to playgrounds, parks and other kid magnets armed with fliers for children to take home.

Although a primary focus will be on the needs of low-income families, Malaske-Samu said workers will contact some parents in all areas of the county and across a range of income levels “so we can draw good, firm conclusions for the work.

“We need to look at care across the continuum of age and income,” she said.

Other details of the exact methodology have yet to be worked out, said Laura Escobedo, associate director of the Van Nuys-based Child Care Resource Center. The center, which provides referrals on child-care services in the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and Antelope valleys, is the largest of the county’s 10 nonprofit child-care resource agencies charged with helping conduct the mammoth day-care survey.

Nearly $160,000 in public funding has been earmarked for the local survey, which is being launched as Los Angeles County prepares for an influx of an estimated 97,000 CalWorks children.

Although most counties began planning for the assessment months ago, state officials said some, like Los Angeles, are just now beginning the actual survey.

Anecdotally, local child-care experts say they already have a good hunch of what areas will be found lacking: infant care, child care during evenings and weekends, and care in some of the more remote regions that are popular with growing families, but have yet to catch the eye of the $30-billion-a-year day-care industry.

“The Antelope Valley is very spread out and sparsely populated,” in comparison with the Los Angeles Basin, said Escobedo. “There are a lot of little communities [and] some don’t have any child care at all.”

Lisa Nunez of the county Department of Public Social Services noted that even in areas where there are child-care vacancies, the problem of after-hours care remains.

“Even if [the supply] is wonderful, it still doesn’t hit the nontraditional-hours care that’s needed,” she said.

The state also requires the assessments to include data on:

* The needs of families eligible for subsidized child care.

* Waiting lists.

* Child-care needs of children in migrant farming families, children with special needs or those in protective services.

The San Francisco-based child-care network, which includes the Van Nuys agency, conducted a detailed survey of licensed care in Los Angeles County last fall.

That survey, which listed the “quality gap” for child care, showed that in Escobedo’s service area there were spaces for about 12,380 children in 1,500 licensed family day-care homes--small, residential-based services typically offering care for up to six or eight children.

By April of this year, the number of Valley day care homes had grown to 1,760, offering space for an estimated 14,100 youngsters, Escobedo said.

Most parents who opt for licensed care, rather than a relative, choose day-care centers.

The 1997 survey found more than 570 licensed centers in the Valley region, offering space for 36,670 children. This year, the number of centers has grown to 600, offering space for about 38,650 children, Escobedo said.

Countywide, the 1997 survey found 38,700 slots in about 4,830 licensed homes and roughly 137,650 spaces in 2,130 licensed centers.

Malaske-Samu stressed, however, that the ongoing effort is more than just a head count.

“It’s about getting to the right people and posing the right questions,” she said. “We’re taking this whole thing very seriously.”

To reach the Valley’s Child Care Resource Center, call (818) 756-3360. To reach the Child Care Coordinator’s office, call (213) 974-2440.