February 22, 2006

From Agony to Organizing
Home-based providers are working together to achieve safe, affordable, high-quality child care

By NANCY GERBER
Guest Writer

For more than 30 years, I have been a family child care provider — caring for children in my own home while their parents work or attend school so they are better able to support them. Home-based child care is essential for families who cannot access child care centers because they work irregular hours, because there is no center-based care available in their area, or because their children need individual attention.

Seventy thousand children in Washington State stay with a family child care provider. One of these children is “Marty,” a beautiful 7-year-old boy who has serious and complex medical needs.

When Marty was 3, his mother found herself the sole support for the family. I’ll never forget how relieved she was to find someone who could offer the care and learning environment Marty needed while she worked to provide for him and his sister. She drove all the way across town and back twice a day for three years to drop Marty off and pick him up.

When Marty and his sister both began school, transportation became almost impossible with their full and half-day school schedules, and their mother had to find child care closer to where she lived and worked.

It took her almost a year to find care for her children, while making the same cross-town commute three or more times every day.

It’s not easy to find a learning environment with the individual attention kids need to thrive, especially for children with special needs — and this is where the warm, home setting of family child care makes an important difference in children’s lives.

Still, it’s getting harder and harder for working parents to find affordable, quality care for their children.

Providers are leaving the field in staggering numbers. I am one of 9,000 family child care providers in Washington State. Just two years ago, that number was 14,000. In Spokane, we have lost a third of our family providers in the last year alone.

Like other providers I know, I do this job because I love helping families and making a difference in children’s lives. But for many providers, it’s a painful choice between helping the families we serve and caring for our own families.

My yearly earnings average $2.88 per hour.

Much of my income comes from Washington’s subsidy program, which helps low- and moderate-income families afford child care. The rates at which our state reimburses child care providers are some of the lowest in the country. Family child care providers also have few opportunities for training and no paid sick days or other things that make it possible to stay in a job.

I am a cancer survivor, but because of a change in IRS rules, I lost access to Washington’s Basic Health plan. Without health insurance, I don’t know if I will be able to afford the follow-up visits my doctor recommended, and will probably have to miss them.

For every family child care provider who can’t afford to stay in the profession, there are seven or eight children in Washington who lose their caregiver — and one less option for working families looking for child care.

Providers are tired of having to turn families away. After working for years to stabilize our jobs through child care associations and appealing individually to our elected representatives, we’ve joined together to strengthen our profession and build a stronger voice to improve child care by forming a union.

Although child care services are arranged with individual families, subsidy rates and other policies that affect providers’ working conditions are determined by the state. Providers need a strong voice to help the state ensure that safe, affordable, quality child care is accessible to working families in Washington.

Now we’re counting on our legislators to give us the freedom to bargain collectively with the state so we can raise standards, protect early care and learning for children, and help stabilize an industry that is crucial for families and vital to our state’s economy. The Access to Quality Family Child Care Act would give family providers a stronger voice to improve child care so that working families have access to the quality care they need. And that would benefit everyone in the state — not just child care providers.

It’s up to all of us in Washington to make sure our representatives know how important quality child care is to our families. 

[Take Action]

If you’re concerned about access to quality child care, call 1(800)562-6000 to leave a message for your legislator in support of H.B. 2353 and S.B. 6165. For more info, visit seiu925.org.

Nancy Gerber is a member of the Governor’s Early Learning Council, a family child care provider, and a member of SEIU Local 925.