KIDS COUNT: HOW DO OUR CHILDREN FARE?

A concerted and immediate effort is critical to ensure affordable, practical and trustworthy child care is available for American children, states the Kids Count report released this week by The Annie E. Casey Foundation.

The Kids Count Data Book is an annual statistical assessment of the well-being of American children. For nine years the report has compiled the most recent government data available to track the condition of children over time on a variety of factors, including demographic, economic and health data.

The 1998 report found about 51 percent of children ages 6-12 lived with working families, while 21 percent of children under age 13 lived in low-income families, and all require affordable and accessible child care. Writers suggested that an increased number of working parents, poorly-paid child care workers, and growth in nontraditional jobs and work hours is resulting in a near-crisis situation for many American families.

Working families, especially the poorest working families, are settling for substandard -- and in some cases harmful -- child care and have "dangerously few good options," reads the report.

As welfare reform is fully implemented and former recipients enter the workforce, the problems associated with child care will soar unless the government, business, religious and civic communities coordinate their efforts.

"If we don't improve upon the current state of child care, we will not only undermine welfare reform and weaken the future workforce, but we also end up putting tens of thousands of children in harm's way," said Casey foundation director Douglas W. Nelson in a news release.

"Parents trying to make ends meet and provide quality care for their children need a child care environment that helps prepare their children for school," he said.

Child care providers in Missouri and Illinois agreed with the report's findings. Most parents are requesting affordable child care that provides strong educational opportunities for children in a safe environment, they said. They also want care providers to extend operating hours to coincide with varying work shifts and nontraditional jobs, they said.

Rodney Bird, director of the Greater Dimension Child Care Center in Cape Girardeau, said his organization has had problems training and maintaining qualified personnel. Parents don't want to sacrifice quality for affordability, but it's difficult for many centers to afford to pay trained personnel well enough to enable them to stay.

"Fortunately we have people in our church who have been trained and are dedicated to what we are doing," he said. "By us being church-oriented, its a ministry as well as a service."

The Rev. William Bird, pastor of Greater Dimension Church, said the center sought and received a license from the state and is constantly upgrading services to try and meet parent concerns about safety, curriculum, nutrition and other issues. Each day parents call with new requests for longer hours, weekend child care and other issues, and as demand grows the center will try to provide the services, he said.

"We don't want to just have a baby sitting agency," he said. "We're going to continue to try to accommodate the parents and yet still provide quality care."

Other child care providers are also making adjustments to meet parent concerns. In particular, Head Start programs throughout the nation are being reshaped to fit the needs of the communities they serve.

Head Start is a federally-funded program which provides a variety of child-oriented services to mainly low-income families.

Teresa Gilbert, administrator of the Southern Seven Health Department in Anna, Ill., said her Head Start program currently serves 523 children in the lower seven counties of southern Illinois between the ages of 3 and 5. That total will increase to 573 children next year to meet increased need in some communities, she said.

Other changes on tap include a greater physical presence for the program as well as extended services. Three new sites are currently under construction, and new partnerships with existing child care centers are underway to reach more children, said Gilbert. The Southern Seven program has also been approved for government subsidy funding in its next budget to extend its care hours for children throughout the day, she said.

"The goal of Head Start is to be community-based, so we continually try to mold the program to fit the needs of our community," she said. "Our primary goal is to increase the level of social competence and to break the cycle of poverty."

Debra Hamilton, assistant executive director of the East Missouri Action Agency in Cape Girardeau, said the agency has also adapted its Head Start to meet changing community needs. Last summer, the local program was one of only four in the state to receive grant funding for a full-day Head Start program. By August 1997, only the Cape Girardeau program continued to function and to date is filled to its capacity of 20 children.

In all, 112 children in Cape Girardeau County benefit from the local Head Start program.

"Definitely, Head Start is changing, community action agencies are changing, because the government is changing and the low-income families in our communities are changing," said Hamilton. "The response to the programs we do offer has been phenomenal, and we're just trying to accommodate our low-income families who have changing needs."