Day-Care Is Center of Attention : Benefits: A growing number of employers acknowledge the need to help workers care for their children, but few provide the benefit.

A single parent of 4-year-old twins, Vicky Fliss has her share of the problems of day-to-day survival.

One, in particular, ranks at the top of her list: how to care for her sons, Christopher and Nicholas, while Fliss is away all day working as an analyst with Kinko’s Service Corp. in Ventura.

Fliss, who lives in Oxnard, gets up half an hour early every weekday so she can deliver the boys to a Ventura day-care center by 7:30 a.m. After work, she picks them up at 5:20 p.m.

“It’s a well-run center and the boys have no complaints,” Fliss says. “But I have no contact with them all day long. That bothers me.”

Fliss expects that to change in August or early September when Kinko’s, a nationwide chain of copying centers, is scheduled to open one of the few on-site child-care centers operated by an employer in Ventura County.

The center, planned to accommodate 68 children, will offer all-day care, including lunch, to preschoolers and after-school care to youngsters 5 through 12.

The new facility will be a boon on two counts for Fliss and other parents who work at Kinko’s. First, Kinko’s will pay half the cost of caring for employees’ children. Second, parents will be able to visit their children during lunchtime and other breaks.

For most Ventura County families needing child care, however, the outlook is not so bright.

While a growing number of employers in the county recognize the need for helping workers care for their children during working hours, few companies provide such benefits.

There is little argument over the need for such care as far as children’s health and safety are concerned. How to deliver such care is the problem.

“It’s the emerging issue of the ‘90s--that’s no secret,” says James W. Word, manager of the J.C. Penney store in Ventura’s Buenaventura Plaza.

A member of a panel of county business leaders seeking answers to the problem, Word already offers flexible schedules and other assistance to working parents on his own payroll.

But, until the retailer authorizes it, he says he cannot lend a hand financially to employees as Kinko’s is planning to do.

At a recent child-care symposium attended by representatives of about 65 businesses and public agencies at Ventura’s Holiday Inn, it was obvious that personnel managers are concerned about the subject--and not just because they sympathize with working parents.

“This is a tough labor market,” one manager attending the meeting remarked. “If we want to retain our present employees and attract new ones to this area, we have to cope with child care.”

The figures bear him out. According to the Resource and Referral Center of Ventura County, a state-supported agency that helps provide child care to needy families, about half the county’s 144,000 children who are 14 or younger need some form of care from outside the family. In most cases, the youngsters are so-called latchkey children, left alone at least part of the day or night.

Sylvia Preston, a resource management supervisor at the center, estimates that less than half the 70,000 children in the county who need such care receive it.

“There are about 16,000 licensed ‘slots’--in child-care centers or in private homes--in the county,” Preston said. “In addition, there are probably another 16,000 children being cared for in unlicensed homes.”

While statistics tell part of the story, the problems of parents throughout the county provide a personal perspective:

* Kaila Kaden, a bookkeeper who lives in Camarillo, found herself out of work, with a newborn baby, when the company she worked for moved out of state.

“I’d heard that Lost Arrow Corp., the parent of Patagonia, the outdoor clothing company, has a highly regarded child-care center on the premises and that sometimes they’ll accept children of non-employees,” she recalled. “When our daughter, Samantha, was 2 weeks old, my husband, Steve, decided to put her on the waiting list. I also applied for a job at Lost Arrow.”

Five months ago, Ventura-based Lost Arrow not only enrolled Samantha in its Great Pacific Child Development Center, it also hired her mother.

“I would never work anyplace else,” Kaden said. “The people at the center have helped Samantha become a social little creature. The company even lets me take extra breaks to visit her. That’s important, because she’s been breast-fed all her life.”

* Martin Wedemeyer, a maintenance supervisor at Patagonia’s distribution center, is especially concerned about child care because he is divorced and has custody of his son, Trevor, 8, and daughter, Kirstin, 7.

“They get out of school in mid-afternoon, while I’m at work,” he says. “Great Pacific picks them up in a van and takes them to its center.

“That solves a tough logistical problem for me. But the thing that makes me really happy is the quality of care that the children are getting. There are animals, computers, arts and crafts, field trips. It’s more than just a playground. The kids have learned to interact with other children.”

* Traci Luke, a Kinko’s accounts payable supervisor, is expecting her first child in September. She plans to return to work--and enroll her baby in the infants unit of Little “K” Kids--two months after the baby arrives.

“If it weren’t for the on-site center, I’m sure I’d be out longer,” she said. “So both the employees and the company will benefit.”

Preston and most experts agree that the basic reason for the large number of children needing care either after school or throughout the day is the working mother. Up to 70% of the nation’s mothers work outside the home. In Ventura County, where housing costs are among the highest in the country, the percentage is probably even higher as families find themselves needing two paychecks to survive, Preston and others say.

“You can’t find infant care that’s affordable,” said Ellen B. Goodman, child-care coordinator for city employees in Ventura. “There’s also a vast need for sick care. When a child is sick, a parent has to stay home, and the employer has to pay.”

Despite the low jobless rate in the county, some families that need child care cannot afford it. Samuel Garcia, Resource and Referral’s director of child care, said his agency is paying all or part of the child-care tuition for 958 children.

On the national level, child care has become a hot, and costly, issue. Despite a threatened veto by President Bush, the House last month approved child-care legislation that would cost $27.5 billion over five years.

Besides providing after-school care for an estimated 10 million latchkey children, the bill would help businesses provide such care for employees’ children. One Congressman, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), told an interviewer federal support for child care will reach “$100 billion a year before you can put your hat back on.”

Meanwhile, the child-care picture in Ventura County is changing rapidly.

County employees, some of whose children are already enrolled in programs, will soon be offered 50 additional spaces in a new center to be operated in Ventura by Peppermint Junction Children’s Center Inc.

Parents will be charged $67 a week per child, less than the average rate in the county of $70 to $87, according to Debra Bergevin, the county’s child-care coordinator.

CHILD-CARE SPACES

Licensed child-care spaces in Ventura County

Children through Area age 14 Spaces* Oxnard-Port Hueneme 33,623 3,370 Ventura-Ojai 22,188 4,285 Camarillo 10,647 1,414 Fillmore-Santa Paula 8,016 736 Moorpark-Simi Valley 26,063 3,722 Thousand Oaks 23,044 1,668 Other 20,737 1,056 TOTAL 144,318 16,251

* It is estimated that about an equal number of unlicensed spaces are operating in the county.

Source: Resource and Referral Center of Ventura County Child Development Resources, Inc.