raining program usnefits providers asA day care hildren Laura Jacobson All of us pay for day care - either by providing quality programs lor our children directly, or indirectly whel for. Sil labol have 70.01 -8, m through the social costs we pay I children aren't properly cared nee 1970, women in the Oregon r lorce with chlldren under stx almost doubled. An estimated M, or nearly hall (48 percent) of .a, "reuon women 16and over. now fit in 16s category, according to the Oregon State Employment Division projections for 1981. This trend has outslripped the availability of child day care in Oregon. Some aswcts of child dav care contr#but~ntgo thls shortage are seldom consodered. There IS a htgh turnover among those who provide licensed family d i v care. Because of the nature of the work, providers onm become disillusioned. Isolated. They have no one to share their concerns and problems with. NOsupport systems to bail them out. In Oregon, the slab-wk turnsver rate m now aooroachina 80 percent per year. ~ & a u s ethe; is a bullt-in support system present in most day care mnters, they have a slightly lower rate ol 45 percent. For many families. the concern over availabilih of child care is matched by a concern about the qualaly 01 the care. Unlortunately. most family day care providers have had little or no formal training. But this vear. a model trainino program ihlhe'~ort1and metropolitan area is addressing both of these needs. U ntil last September. Rita Pierce. 21, was home with a child. had no readily saleable skills, and was living on welfare. Since then, R~tahas been employed as an apprentice in a new training program which has taken her from classroom to the Helen Gordon Child Development Center at Portland State University. The center IS the stte of a pre-school I kindergarten program that also serves as a lab school for PSU. Rita observes how c,asSeSare run. plans prolects tar Chridren. and has lots of OoportLnfty to try o ~ dteas and ask questions of the specialists who work there. Rita is one of 30 people training to become a family day care provider through the pilot program called the Child Care Demonstration Project. Funded by the City of Portland Emolovment and Trainina Aqencv (CETA~th.e program, wich;uni from SeptemDer 1980 to September 1981, has taken these people on tne welfare rolls and is provid~ngthem with trainlng so they can become qualified family day care provlders in their own homes or in centers. The training program is run through the cooperative effort of a consortium which includes the Child Care Coordinating Council (4-C's). Multnomah County. Portland Com- muntty College. Portland Public Schools. Portland State (Helen Gor- don Child Development Center). St. Vincent De Paul Child Development Center, and YMCA of Coiumb~a- Willamene. The year-long training program is divided into two sections: four weeks of classroom instruction through Portland Community College,follow- ed by four weeks of practical ex- perience at St. Vincent's Day Care Center in Northeast Portland or the Helen Gordon Center. Then, for the next seven months they care for chlldren in their home or at centers while receiving a $669 monthly wage. Trainers continue to meet with tralnees in their new working en- vironments, according to Marilyn Ballinger. Project Coordinator. Unlque to the project is the idea of paying child care workers a salary they can depend on while they're gening started. One factor con- trlbutlng to h~ghturnover rates among providers is that they could not count on enough income from month to month as the number of children in care fluctuated. Referrals of children who need care are made to the women through the council. Aner nine rnonths in the program. the CETA worker finishes with 36 hours of credit and a cer- tificate in child care from Ponland Community College. "This project is really innovative in terms of child care programming." explained Margaret Browning. D~rectoorf the Helen Gordon Center. "Most family day care providers, un- less they have the initiative and ac- tively seek out trainlng for themselves, don't have any kind of formal training. Those who have gone through the tralning have a big advantage. One of the basic thrusts of this program is improvlng the quality of day care in the Portland area." IldlllWC1, I Pierce, assis classroom PSU's Hs Gordon Chdc velopment Lerr- ter, as a partici- pant in a new CETA-funded program to im- prove qualrly and quantiv of chrld day care in Port- land. "We (the Center) see ourselves as trying to serve the community as much as possible. Part of the reason that we were interested in gening in- volved in this project is that we'd be able to take trainees from the com- munity that we otherwise wouldn't have contact with." Browning added. ASa natural offshoot of classroom trainino. this aroiect also Offers a sipPo;t netwkrk'for these soon-to- be day care provlders Trainers hold monthly meetings for all trainees to come together. "This is really nice for the tratnees because it gives them an opportunity to widen their social, as well as their professional. circles." noted Ballinger. Armed with an lnittal $537.671 grant. the project origlnaliy set out to train 38 dav care oroviders. However,dbeto the h r ng lreeze m- posed on federal agencles by Presl- dent Reagan's Admon~stration.I n rather than the planned 38 will -- par- ticipate In this year's program. Referring to Helen Gordon Center's participation in the program, Ballinger said. "it's a real plus for us to have access to this kind of quality institutional Senlng. it's also a real plus for the lraineesto have access to the experiences they get while in this bullding . . . The program here is federally licensed and provides a line complement to the classroom component of tt training. What they see here re forces what they hear in the classroom."
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