Hampton Roads parents must navigate child care maze

The search for child care began well before her baby was born.

Monica Patterson asked around, talked to friends and pored over reports about child care centers on the state Department of Social Services' website.

She started while pregnant, and by the time her first child arrived, she and her husband, Dennis, still had not made a decision.

Some of what she found in inspection reports on the Web was scary, she said, and those were just for licensed centers. Many in Virginia are exempt from licensing.

This surprised her. Like many parents, Patterson had assumed all child care providers would be licensed.

But in the search for child care, parents in Virginia are largely on their own. The state isn't much help.

Add to the mix the issues of affordability and availability, and parents can be overwhelmed.

The state lists about 4,100 licensed child care programs, but the true number of providers is much higher. Anyone who can stake a sign on the corner or post a notice on a grocery store bulletin board can throw their hat in the ring.

Susan Hackney has seen it all - she spent 39 years as a licensing official with the Department of Social Services. She retired this summer.

"I think one of the scariest things - when a parent will call and they're reporting their child care provider, and I ask, 'How did you find out about them?' "

And the answer is: Craigs-list. Hackney heard that a lot.

"You can buy a television from that," she said. "But you don't want to get child providers from that."

She advises people to do a thorough child care search on the state website.

It provides the results of investigations and inspections for licensed facilities going back about five years.

Even the best child care centers have violations, but not all are equally serious.

A center or home provider can be cited for a bottle of liquid hand soap on a sink that is within children's reach. Or the citation can raise more red flags: lack of background checks on staff members, for example.

For unlicensed providers, such as religious-exempt centers and many home-based day cares, parents see much less information, if any.

The scrutiny of those providers is mostly up to parents.

And almost half of children in day care in Virginia are in unregulated settings, according to the Virginia Child Care Resource and Referral Network.

Susan Vierra, a Virginia Beach registered nurse who teaches Lamaze and childbirth preparation, tries to help parents weed through their child care options.

She teaches a class called Day Care 101: Surviving Early Parenting.

She provides checklists and websites and reminds expectant parents that if they're not going with licensed child care, they must be prepared to do background checks themselves.

Some parents feel uncomfortable asking a potential provider to supply background reports on criminal history and child abuse registries, she said.

"It's just simple to me," Vierra said. "Why wouldn't you?"

State statistics indicate the need for a pro-active approach.

Between 2005 and 2010, 16 children died in day care settings statewide, almost a third of them in South Hampton Roads. And more than 100 reports of child abuse or neglect were substantiated in the 2009-2010 fiscal year alone. South Hampton Roads topped the list with a total of 25 such cases in Virginia Beach and Norfolk.

"You want to have faith, and you want to have hope, and you want to believe everyone is telling the truth," Vierra said. "But that's just not the way it is today."

Fern Rohrer, a state-licensed day care provider for 23 years, expects parents to ask tough and personal questions.

If anyone hesitates in their answers or balks at background checks, a parent should move on, she said.

"I don't think it's insulting," Rohrer said about being asked for a background check. "I think it's a smart parent." She said she has a background check done every year and also has been fingerprinted for the more comprehensive check.

Rohrer, of Norfolk, tells parents how to look her up on the state website and provides plenty of references.

She got into baby-sitting because of her own concerns as a parent. Her son was born with cerebral palsy, and she was worried about finding someone who could meet his needs to care for him. Taking children in allowed her to stay home with him.

In 1988, she became licensed, and she likes knowing the state will look over her shoulder.

"I would rather be licensed and keep on my toes than not be licensed," said Rohrer.

Still, it can be hard to compete with nonregulated providers who are usually less expensive.

Rohrer said she charges about $150 a week per child and is about to go up to $160. The cost was higher at one time, but she lowered it when the economy flagged.

Even in hard times, she said, the worst mistake a parent can make when searching for child care is to make a decision based on cost alone.

"You're going to get what you pay for."

Until recently, Alisa Weaver stayed home and took care of her two daughters, Catience and Elizabeth.

For the Navy wife, any extended family to help with child care was back in San Antonio. Her husband was deployed a lot, so staying home seemed best.

Once she and her husband separated, she knew she needed a job.

The 25-year-old Virginia Beach mother's search for employment turned out to be much easier than the hunt for child care.

Day care was more expensive than she imagined, and she found it hard to find a center that would take both of her daughters, now ages 3 and 5.

She didn't want to go with a home-based provider because she worried there was a greater risk of sexual abuse. Even if she trusted the baby-sitter, it didn't mean everyone else in the household was safe, she reasoned.

Some of the centers she visited didn't seem clean. One looked as if it was little more than a double-wide trailer, she said, and inside the carpet was old.

Weaver looked at a couple of church-run schools and found them crowded.

A Navy Fleet and Family Support staffer referred her to the Armed Services YMCA in the Pembroke area.

She liked the program, but with the down payment and application fee, it was going to cost her more than $1,000 the first month.

The fees seemed steep, but she had already found a job - a starting position at a Chesapeake auto dealer - and couldn't find a place she liked better.

"I knew I needed a job, and I needed my kids to be safe," she said.

In the end, a friend kept her children temporarily, and Weaver took out a loan to get through the first month at the YMCA.

She liked the center but was told that under state licensing regulations, the children would have to get updated physicals to stay in the program.

Weaver again had a friend keep the kids until she could take care of the physicals.

Then came another problem. She got a promotion and had to work later in the evenings, but the YMCA program closed at 6 p.m.

She has since found a spot for her daughters at a KinderCare near her workplace.

The program, part of a national chain of children's centers, costs her about $320 a week for both girls - higher than what she paid at the YMCA. But Weaver likes the program and says the girls are learning a lot.

Weaver is not alone in her battle with affordability. About 43 percent of families looking for child care have problems because of costs, openings and other issues, according to the Virginia Child Care Resource & Referral Network.

The nonprofit is a network of agencies and organizations that work to improve the child care industry while helping parents find providers.

As Weaver learned, availability can be a serious obstacle for parents seeking child care.

Locally, about 70 percent of full-time, full-year child care centers kept waiting lists, according to a 2005 study by Smart Beginnings, South Hampton Roads.

But Smart Beginnings and other child advocates want parents to focus on more than just finding an open day care spot. They advise parents to make sure the program is preparing their children for school.

"This is far more than baby-sitting," said Lisa Howard, president of Smart Beginnings, South Hampton Roads.

The group was founded on that issue in 2004 by local businesses and community leaders.

The driving force, she said, was the release of some discouraging statistics for South Hampton Roads. One out of five children were not entering school prepared, and a fourth of all kindergarten students who were held back in Virginia were from this area.

Howard said she was fortunate her two children were able to attend a military child development center when they were younger.

The Department of Defense, she said, has invested heavily in its child care program and become a model for quality day care.

However, she added, "the military will tell you they cannot meet the demand."

Jaime Adams, a Norfolk Navy wife, learned about the military's waiting list the hard way.

She had assumed she would enroll her newborn at a Navy child development center, as some of her friends in Florida had done.

At the last minute, she found out that her son, Ashton, would probably have his first birthday before he got in.

The Navy runs a dozen child development centers in South Hampton Roads. They're open to families of all branches of the military.

Four of the centers are open 24 hours daily, with a capacity of 15 children per shift.

The other eight have a total capacity for 1,623 children and waiting lists nearly as long - almost 1,500.

Soon after having her baby, Adams realized how scarce spots were, and she panicked.

"In six weeks, you pretty much have to figure everything out."

She tried to find home providers who had been certified by the military. "That experience was awful," she said.

Adams spent hours on the phone, but no one had room for her infant son, she said.

Soon, she found out she'd been dropped from the Navy's waiting list. She didn't realize she had to renew her paperwork every three months.

She started to look at large day care centers with cameras that would allow her to look in from her computer at work.

The cost, though, was "outrageous and unaffordable," she said.

In the end, she went online and found two licensed providers in her area. She chose Rohrer, who runs Reflections of Mother Home Daycare from a converted first floor of her Norfolk home.

Rohrer was willing to work with Adams' breast-feeding schedule and made her feel welcome to drop in anytime.

One day while Adams was there, the state inspector came through. She was impressed with the thoroughness as the inspector looked at everything from baby equipment and gates to food storage.

As happy as she was with her day care provider, Adams knew she wanted to eventually get her son into one of the military's child development centers.

She kept her name on the waiting list.

Recently she got the call that there was a space in a center at a Norfolk Navy base. Ashton started there Nov. 14, two months after his first birthday.

Adams plans to continue to use Rohrer when she needs additional baby-sitting.

Rohrer knows the Navy child development centers are a good option for Adams and other families. A large portion of the children she keeps have at least one parent in the military, she said. Even when they leave for the military centers, she keeps in touch with the families.

Ashton will be at her house for her annual Christmas gathering, Rohrer said.

"He's still part of my life."

The Pattersons' story had a happy ending, too.

About two months after their daughter was born, they got welcome news. Baby Sydney's grandmother had decided to give up her job to watch her.

Two years later, the Pattersons had a second child, Dennis III, for his mother to watch and they soon realized Sydney was ready for a classroom setting.

They were back to their research and homework.

The Rev. Dennis Patterson, an Episcopal priest, already had a pretty good idea of a center he liked for his daughter: the one he attended as a boy.

Patterson went to the center, now called the Children's Harbor in Ghent, for a 100th anniversary celebration in June.

It seemed that nothing had changed since he was a preschooler.

Three of the teachers and staff members were still there and knew him by name.

He saw the reading cubby holes he used to know and the window where he waved goodbye to his mother.

Now, it's his daughter's classroom. And one of his former teachers is his daughter's teacher.

The Pattersons like that sense of tradition. And they liked what they saw in the present, too.

The school is rated four out of five stars as a participant of the Quality Rating Improvement System administered by Smart Beginnings. Howard calls the rating system a consumer education tool for parents looking for quality early education.

The Pattersons also liked the fact that Sydney would spend time with children from various socio-economic backgrounds.

"Both my wife and I came up in that kind of environment," Patterson said.

Monica likes that the staff makes her feel welcome to drop in to check on her daughter since her downtown office is not far.

"It helps me have peace of mind while I'm at work."

Janie Bryant, (757) 446-2453, janie.bryant@pilotonline.com