Center Gets Grant to Improve Child Care

The Center for the Improvement of Child Caring will received a $300,000 grant from the Los Angeles County Proposition 10 Commission to expand education programs for parents and child-care professionals.

Proposition 10, approved by state voters in 1998, levies a 50-cent tax on cigarettes to be used for early childhood development programs.

“The new grant enables us to bring the best parenting education programs and materials into child-care and family day-care centers,” said Kerby T. Alvy, executive director of the Studio City center.

“We have been advocating nationally and locally for years for parenting education to become available through the child-care system . . . .” he said. “The Prop. 10 Commission has made a pioneering decision to support this kind of effort.”

Alvy, a child psychologist, founded the center 26 years ago to help parents raise their children “effectively and humanely.”

“We’re coming to a point in our society when you look at the problems that come from parents that don’t have a clue how to raise their kids,” he said. “It’s to everyone’s good that all parents receive support and education.”