EXCERPT FROM: Cape Cod Times
By Susan Milton
HARWICH — Christy Foster of Eastham remembers when she had to take her younger child to her bookkeeping job with her. Luckily, she had a flexible boss. On other days, her in-laws handled day care duty, something they still do a couple days a week.
"I don't know how people do it with only one income, or without some family around," she said.
Foster, a mother of three, looks around and sees other families scrambling, just as she did, for a way to work and make a living while having young children at home or in school.
"With the economy as it is, people have lost jobs and they can't even afford to send the kids to day care anymore," Foster said.
The four panelists are: Sherri Killins, Massachusetts commissioner of Early Education and Care; Elizabeth Aldred, coordinator of grants and advocacy at Cape Cod Children's Place in Eastham; Kristen Lind, training coordinator for Child Care Network of the Cape & Islands; and Patricia Policastro, Family Child Care Home Visitor at Cape Cod Child Development.
The topic of child care generated discussion at a recent League of Women Voters forum, said Orleans resident Joan Grant. "The more people thought about it, the more we realized that child care affects everyone."
Without affordable child care, working families will leave — and "then we won't have people to fill the jobs such as teachers and police officers," she said.
Statistics document the rising demand for affordable child care on the Cape, according to the Child Care Network of the Cape and Islands.
As of September there were 976 children from 749 Cape and Islands families on the waiting list for child care subsidies from the state Department of Early Education and Care. That is up 22 percent from February 2009, when the list named 800 children from 606 Cape families.
Despite the demand for child care, there were 174 vacancies in the Cape's 67 licensed child care centers and 215 vacancies in licensed family care programs last September, according to the network's latest report.
"Providers don't have waiting lists; they have openings, because parents can't afford to pay," Aldred said.
Since 1988, Gretchen Kolb Cauble has tracked the child care scene at her Rocking Unicorn in Chatham. Her facility is licensed to provide care for 24 children daily, ranging from 2 years, 9 months to age 5. The parents of her students work in a range of jobs. Some have their own restaurants, others are fishermen, landscapers, builders and nurses, firefighters and police officers, and some are self-employed, she said.
"There are a lot more challenges lately for parents," she said. "Parents have lost their jobs and some can afford to pay for just one year of preschool. We have a lot of grandparents that help support the families financially, with housing and picking up and dropping off the kids."
Kolb Cauble and Children's Place are part of a network including child care providers, towns and churches, all trying to expand the safety net to help parents with child care costs as dwindling state subsidies fail to meet the need.
The towns of Eastham, Wellfleet and Brewster have allocated money for Cape Cod Children's Place, the nonprofit child care resource, referral and education center in Eastham. In addition, Seamen's Bank helped create Sea Babies, a child care center in Wellfleet where bank staff can leave their children.