Seniors Bring Hands, Hugs to Child Care

The first day of preschool can be upsetting for any toddler, but 14-month-old Eric Stammer was inconsolable.

Until 94-year-old Grace Kruse pulled the sobbing child onto her lap and gave him a few hugs. Soon he was all smiles and playing with other children.

Such individual attention isn’t always available at crowded child care centers. That’s why a growing number of facilities are recruiting elderly volunteers like Kruse.

Lutheran Home and Services in suburban Arlington Heights has gone a step further. In September it opened a child care center on the premises of its 105-year-old nursing home, where Kruse has lived for nine years.

For years, the home had invited Girl Scout troops, teen volunteers and mothers with toddlers to visit its residents.

“What we learned from this experience was really how much it benefits both groups,” said Mary Jo Zeller, community services administrator at Lutheran Home. “We really wanted to take it to the next level.”

About 50 children, ages 6 weeks to 5 years, are enrolled in the program. Residents, whom the children address as “grandma” and “grandpa,” volunteer a few hours a week to read stories, do arts and crafts projects or hold babies.

The children are taken through the home to meet some of the more frail residents. On Halloween they go from room to room trick-or-treating.

“I sure enjoy it,” said Kruse, who taught kindergarten and Sunday school for 40 years but never had children of her own. “Those dear little faces just light up. And when they call you grandma, it just makes you feel so good.”

Parents and teachers are happy too. “Our parents say they are already seeing personality changes,” Zeller said. “Their children have become more outgoing and confident.”

Last year’s federal welfare overhaul, which emphasizes getting people back to work, is increasing pressure on the nation’s already inadequate child care system. In Illinois, healthy adults must find work after two years and cannot spend more than five years in total on welfare.

Recent court cases, including the conviction of British au pair Louise Woodward in the death of an 8-month-old in her care, have highlighted the problems faced by parents looking for safe, quality child care.

Studies presented at a White House conference on child care in October indicate that the quality of care across the country is often poor and usually mediocre, because of inexperienced and unmotivated workers and staff shortages.

“There are a lot of people who take care of children who don’t really want to,” Ellen Galinsky, president of the New York-based Families and Work Institute, said at the conference.

But it’s difficult to find and keep quality staff when average pay is $6.89 an hour, child care authorities said. One-third of workers leave their jobs each year.

Elderly volunteers cannot replace professional child care staff, but with training they can help improve the adult-to-child ratio in crowded classrooms, Zeller said. The intergenerational programming at Lutheran Home helped attract quality workers, she added.

The elderly population is growing faster than any other in the United States. One in eight Americans--about 34 million--is over 65, according to the Census Bureau. That ratio is expected to go to 1 in 6, with about 53 million seniors, by 2020.

“We have at this point in history the largest, healthiest, most educated elderly community we have ever had,” said Nancy Henkin, director of the Center for Intergenerational Learning at Temple University in Philadelphia. “We have all these unmet needs and all these untapped resources. What we need to do is figure out ways of getting them together.”

About 24,000 elderly people across the country volunteer through the government’s Foster Grandparents program to work with about 80,000 children in schools, hospitals, drug-treatment centers, homeless shelters and correctional institutions. They tutor troubled teens, care for abused, neglected and disabled children, and mentor teenage mothers.

The American Assn. of Retired Persons has identified 280 public and private centers with joint programs for the young and elderly, but AARP researcher Amy Goyer believes there are many more.

Mary Crane Center at Julia Lathrop Homes, a housing project on Chicago’s North Side, has used elderly volunteers recruited by the Foster Grandparents program at its nursery school for about 30 years.

Recently the 3- to 5-year-olds were playing in the schoolyard when shooting between members of rival gangs broke out nearby. The panic-stricken children were hustled inside the building; none of them was injured.

“It took all our staff to calm them down,” director Mary Beltran said. “Just having that extra lap, those extra arms to help calm the kids can really help.”

About 95% of children in the program come from single-parent households, Beltran said. Many also are from immigrant families from Latin America who don’t have relatives in this country. Their parents have minimum-wage jobs, often working nights and weekends, and they spend six to 11 hours a day in care, Beltran said.

“Our children don’t always get enough attention at home, and having another adult in the class offers them that opportunity to have one-on-one,” she said.