|
Dublin tackling lack of child care
Recruitment effort under way to kick-start day care programs
By Brooke Bryant
STAFF WRITER for Tri Valley Herald
Monday, August 04, 2003 - DUBLIN—New families are moving into
Eastern Dublin at a faster rate than child care providers, leaving
parents scrambling to find places to care for their kids.
Child Care Links is launching a new campaign called the Eastern
Dublin Child Care Project in an attempt to bridge that gap. The
agency hopes to recruit family child care providers—people who are
licensed to care for a small group of kids in their own homes.
“Eastern Dublin is different from some of the other cities in the
Tri-Valley,” said Shauna Brown, a Child Care Community Specialist
with the agency. She said the city has plans to grow exponentially
in the east, with thousands of homes in the works.
“Already Dublin, prior to building that housing, had a smaller
supply than Livermore and Pleasanton. Now they’ve added all this
housing, that furthers the gap,” she said.
The
shortage is for infant and school-aged care, according to a report
published by a county group.
Brown said
she knows of only one family child care provider in Eastern Dublin,
which is defined as anything east of Dougherty Road.
The report,
compiled by the Alameda County Local Investment in Child Care
project, takes a look at child care supply and demand in Alameda
County cities.
It
identified 190 spaces for infant care in 2002, and found that demand
outstripped that, ranging from 219 spaces in the best-case scenario
to 423 spaces in the worst case.
The actual
demand is difficult to pin down, the report says, so it offers a
range from a conservative estimate to the amount that would be
needed if every family without a stay-at-home parent wanted child
care.
Livermore
has a better overall supply, although it still has gaps, and
Pleasanton has shortages in infant and school-aged care as well,
Brown said.
Using a
$3,500 grant from the city, Child Care Links is offering to help potential providers with the training, home preparation and license
application. It will even cover the $50 cost of the license for
qualified applicants.
Brown has
been putting up fliers to raise interest in the project, and plans
to do outreach through other avenues like schools, the library or
the Shannon Community Center.
Family
child care providers aren’t governed by the same zoning
restrictions as other businesses, so they can operate in areas that
are otherwise strictly residential, Brown said. It doesn’t take
much capital to start up a business, she added, depending on what
kind of improvements the house needs to be considered
child-friendly.
The grant
supplements the $15,000 contract the group makes with the city
annually to provide resources and referrals to all Dublin residents.
Source:
Tri-Valley Herald
|