Good Times Yield Child Care Crisis

California’s ongoing economic boom, which has increased employment and the value of homes and stock portfolios, also has created an unprecedented crisis in the child care industry that makes participation in the new economy possible for most families. The problem is acute in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

According to a state-funded study to be released in Sacramento today, there are six children of working parents for every licensed child care spot available in Los Angeles County; the ratio is nearly the same in Orange County. Statewide, there are five children of working parents for every slot.

Though the number of slots available in Orange County increased by 5% from 1996 to 1998, the county now measures 54th among the state’s 58 counties in its supply of child care, the study shows.

With Orange County’s population increasing, there are only 50,802 slots available in licensed child care facilities for 315,356 children in need of care. That means the supply meets only 16% of the estimated demand, with the shortages most extreme in the central and southern areas of the county. Care for infants is also in great demand; less than 5% of the licensed care slots are for children younger than 2.

Statewide, moreover, a parent who earns the median income now spends nearly a fifth of it on child care, while minimum wage earners in many areas must spend more than half of everything they make to pay for child care.

“This is a problem for everybody,” said Alice Walker Duff, president of the California Child Care Resource & Referral Network, which compiled the report. The network is an association of 61 state-funded agencies in all 58 counties that provide referrals for child care, offer parents information on how to choose quality care, and help policymakers by gathering data and identifying key areas of local need.

“So often people tend to compartmentalize this issue, but you can’t fix it for one group,” Duff said. “It has to work for everyone. Society needs these children to grow up well.”

Several Los Angeles child care providers agreed with the report’s findings that care is in extremely short supply for the crucial infant and toddler years, and that the problem has become much more pronounced as more parents join the work force.

At the Joy Picus Child Care Center at City Hall, for example, waiting lists abound for infant and toddler care. The center has 70 children, plus an additional 55 waiting to get in.

The shortage of licensed care for the state’s 3.9 million children needing it actually is worse than the report states, officials with the group say. Although the report says there are five children per slot, those figures were based on 1990 census data. With more people employed now, and more children needing care, officials say that number is extremely conservative. The figure does not take into account, however, children whose parents prefer to leave them with relatives or baby-sitters at home.

In Los Angeles County, the report shows that a family earning the minimum wage spends 60% of its annual income of $11,960 on infant child care at a licensed facility. The same family in Orange County would spend 67% of its annual income. A low-income family in Los Angeles County earning $30,000 annually spends 24% and a median-income family, making $35,863, spends 20%, the report found.

The waiting list for subsidized child care in Orange County is more than 10,000 families long, said Lisa Velarde, child care director for the Children’s Home Society in Orange County.

Velarde attributes the crunch in part to the booming economy, which has drawn more parents to work. Not only do more parents need child care, but qualified child care workers are being lured away to better-paying lines of work.

“People are going to work, and they’re going to need the child care,” Velarde said.

The increased demand is fueled in part by CalWORKS, the state’s version of welfare reform, which required many single mothers to return to the work force, the report indicates. That is particularly true in Anaheim and Santa Ana, where the need for child care has increased dramatically. It has also led to greater demand for night and weekend care, which few child care providers offer.

Of the licensed slots in Orange County, 77% are in day-care centers and the rest in private homes. Providers and others say the problem is so large statewide that state funding probably is the only way to solve it.

For the hundreds of families that are considered working poor, child care costs often are prohibitive, according to the report and local providers.

For many of these and other people, the only alternative is to rely on friends and family.

California expects to put more than a half-million welfare recipients to work over the next few years; of those, more than 60% are single parents with at least one child under 5.

“As a result of welfare reform, we’ve about doubled the number of calls we’ve received” from parents seeking child care, said Duane Dennis, the executive director of Child and Family Services, a referral and resource agency in central Los Angeles.

Along with a robust economy that has more parents returning to work, another crushing problem for child care providers is the high rate of turnover within their staffs. A child care worker who is paid just over $16,000 a year in Los Angeles County has many opportunities to earn more in this economy, officials with the child care resource group say. A preschool teacher, for example, makes more than $20,000.

Nationally, the report said, turnover in the child care field is estimated at 30% a year, a level of instability that can hurt both providers and families.

“Child care almost becomes like taking a vow,” said Patty Siegel, executive director of the child care network. “It has to be a competitive job and not one that is only for those of us who are the true believers.”

The problem for many parents, of course, is the quality of the child care offered. With study after study showing that early childhood development is crucial to success in later years, parents are seeking what they consider top quality providers.

“There are parents who will visit any number of centers, but they’re disappointed,” said Laura Escobedo, the associate director of community relations for the Child Care Resource Center in Van Nuys. “We are working with providers to improve their training . . . but this is something we have to watch carefully.”