News that Ann Mawee's Kinder Kare in Concord had lost its license left Amy Upton's phone ringing. Upton, the director of the East Side Learning Center, said she fielded "at least" eight phone calls this week from parents who had been sending their children to Ann Mawee, now scrambling to find spots elsewhere. She had little to offer.
"Our ability to put them in right now was next to impossible," she said yesterday.
Openings at Concord day cares are scarce - especially for infants. Many programs are at capacity; some have lengthy waiting lists. The demand isn't exclusive to Concord, day-care directors said, though certain conditions have helped fuel it.
"The biggest issue in Concord is the community has mushroomed in the last 10 years, the number of employers has grown in the last 10 years, but the number of child care spaces has not kept up at all. If anything, we've lost them," said Gail Gettens, director of the Children's Learning Center at St. Paul's School.
But that's just part of the problem, she said.
"It's known as the tri-lemma for parents: If you can find a space, it's usually too expensive, or it's not the quality you want," Gettens said. "It's very hard to line up all three pieces . . . finding a space that's available, that your budget can support, that's high quality."
At East Side Learning Center, the summer program is full, though the center - which has more than 175 children in all-day, half-day and after-school programs - expects to have some openings for fall, Upton said.
"Limited," she added quickly. "I think you would see the same thing all around the state. If you went up to the North Country, you would see it even more."
She thinks more centers don't open to meet that demand because "providing child care is very costly, the ratios (of staff to children) you have to maintain." And providing child care for infants and toddlers is even costlier - since it requires a higher ratio of staff members to children - so fewer centers offer it, she said.
The Learning Center at Concord Hospital accepts infants. But the center, which provides child care for hospital employees, has a waiting list that stretches 100 children long.
The length varies, but the center, which has about 130 children enrolled, has had a waiting list for 20 years, said director Maureen Heath.
When she heard about the situation at Ann Mawee's center, the already high demand for day care "was one of my first thoughts," Heath said. "I thought about, what are those families going to do now? It's not easy to find child care."
Kinder Kare, on Dakin Street, had 11 children enrolled when the state revoked its license for what it said were repeated violations of state rules, including instances of corporal punishment and unsafe conditions. The center, which was licensed to accept as many as 35 children, will remain open until its appeal is considered and its case resolved.
The Concord Family YMCA's Child Development Center has room for 100 children, ages one to five, in its daylong program. It has 93 children enrolled, but that doesn't mean it hasn't hit capacity in certain age groups.
"We have had a waiting list for our 3-year-old program of 10 students for several months," said Deborah Galipeault, the center's director.
The New Hampshire Odd Fellows Home Children Center, run out of the nonprofit Presidential Oaks senior care facility, has capacity for 25 children, and 25 are enrolled, said the center's director, Brandy Alfieri.
"My infant care is full. I can only have six infants in the room, and I constantly have a waiting list of 10-plus children," Alfieri said. "I've actually had infants on my waiting list that never actually got into the infant room but came in as toddlers. . . . There's a huge need for it."
St. Paul's opened its learning center in 1991 to provide its employees a service it believed lacking in the community, said Gettens, who was hired to start the program. The center serves children of employees - if a space ever opens up, other children can fill it, but that's not often, Gettens said.