Child-Care Providers Could Get Stipends for Additional Training

In a broad effort to improve the quality of child care in Ventura County, a local commission is offering stipends of up to $750 to providers who complete training courses.

The $750,000 program is expected to support 1,175 providers--a third of those licensed to care for children in Ventura County--over three years. It is being administered by the Ventura County Children and Families First Commission, which decides how to distribute nearly $12 million a year for early-childhood programs.

The grants are intended as incentives to increase the county’s inadequate supply of child care and keep providers from leaving the business, commission leaders said. Good--and consistent--child care is one of the best markers of a child’s future success in school, officials say.

“We believe it’s the best investment we can make to help children achieve throughout their school career,” said county schools Supt. Charles Weis, chairman of the commission. Providers need “higher pay and better training to stay in the profession,” he said.

Spanish speakers are among those targeted by the effort because studies have shown cities with high Latino populations have the lowest supply of child-care providers. But the commission will consider any provider who completes extra classes when deciding who gets the grants.

The program will reach out both to center-based providers and those who run programs out of their homes. The providers will receive stipends to attend continuing education classes, which could include such studies as early childhood education and even Spanish at various county schools.

To qualify for stipends, child-care providers must be in the field for at least a year. Providers can earn a $500 stipend for completing 10 hours of training, and $750 in the second year of the program for classes focused on infants or children with special needs, said Claudia Harrison, executive director of the commission.

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Lidia Martinez typifies the kind of child-care provider the commission wants to reach. She has been taking care of children for 17 years, beginning in her native Argentina and now at her home in Oxnard. The program sounds interesting, Martinez said, but she wants to learn more about it before applying.

“Every day you are learning something different,” says Martinez, who prefers to care for babies and toddlers.

Child care is a serious subject in a growing suburban county like Ventura. A study conducted two years ago by the Oakland-based National Economic Development & Law Center found that the county’s child-care industry is plagued by low wages and high turnover and must fight a “baby-sitting” image.

“There’s a huge need,” said Petra Nagerl, a project specialist with the county’s Child Care Planning Council, which is collaborating on the program. She said the county only has enough slots for about a third of the children in the county. Other children are apparently making do, whether as latchkey children or by being cared for by relatives.

“We don’t know. That’s the scary thing,” she said.

The pilot program is one of many throughout the state that will be evaluated at the end of three years, Harrison said. Funding is generated by Proposition 10’s cigarette tax and a matching grant from the state.

The commission is only now putting together an administrative staff to run the program, which will allow providers to take classes at places where they are already offered, including community colleges and other training programs.

Commission members believe that the more providers know, the more likely they will be to stick around and think of themselves as teachers of their charges.

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“Consistency is immediately related to quality,” said Anita Garaway, chairwoman of the professional development committee of the planning council.

Amy Romero, who runs Apple Family Child Care in Oxnard, is one of those providers who experts hold up as an example. She got into child care when her provider’s operation was closed for having too many children. And she thought she could do better.

She has a classroom, an outdoor patio and a backyard playground for her kids, which includes one child with cerebral palsy. She consistently attends classes and says she could use a stipend to take a class on “special needs” children.

But, she says, it takes a lot of drive and will to keep on her toes.

“There’s a big difference between what we do and baby-sitting,” she said.