Tue, May 13, 2008
Ligia Ponce cares for three children in her Rancho Sahuarita home: from left, twins Connor O'Sullivan and Thomas O'Sullivan and toddler Gabriel Flores.
Photos by David Sanders / Arizona Daily Star
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Tucson, Arizona | Published: 08.31.2006
Rapid population growth and an ongoing shortage of quality child care have created a "crisis" for Sahuarita's working parents, experts say.
The problem is so severe that the Sahuarita town government formed a task force last year to find solutions after hearing about the problem from a roomful of frustrated parents in January 2005.
Most parents in two-income-earning households — the majority of households in Rancho Sahuarita, a survey shows — know the importance of quality, affordable child care.
The lack of that quality child care — especially for infants — in Sahuarita and other outlying areas around Tucson often requires parents to take the kids into the city on the way to work, then juggle dropping them off and picking them up. That includes the occasional pickup in the middle of the day, when a child becomes ill.
Debbie Palmer, who lives in Corona de Tucson and runs a child-care center in Green Valley, said the problem is widespread — but especially bad for residents of outlying areas.
"Even in Tucson they don't have enough child care. But this area is especially hurting," she said.
Long waiting lists
The shortage means parents must endure long waits before their names come up on a waiting list, said Diane Umstead, a Green Valley resident who has years of experience in establishing and operating child-care facilities and has extensively researched the issue.
The problem has been around for years, said Umstead, founder of the Early Childhood Partnership of Southern Pima County and an associate director of Children and Family Services at the Blake Foundation. The foundation is a nonprofit social service agency with headquarters in Tucson.
But it's worse than ever now, with Sahuarita's population pushing 20,000 — including thousands of newcomers who are young people with children. The town's population grew by 332 percent between 2000 and 2005 and is expected to double between 2005 and 2010.
Over the past three years, Children and Family Services has received 299 calls from parents seeking child care for a total of 455 children.
That's four times the number of calls it has fielded for similar-size regions, agency officials said.
"We're in crisis here," Umstead said. "People are coming here from Colorado, California, Maryland — from places where the (child-care) services were already in place — and they found there were none here."
Expected more child care
Wyleah Blohm ran into the problem last year soon after moving to Sahuarita from Tucson's Northeast Side, where she and her husband and two children lived briefly after arriving from Texas last fall.
"I expected to find more child care in Sahuarita," she said. "Everybody talked about how many young families there were in Sahuarita, so I thought they should have a lot of child care down there."
Not so, Blohm soon learned. It was especially tough to find care for her son, Caydn, then 4 months old.
"Finding infant care is almost impossible unless you want to try home care, which has problems," she said.
Umstead agreed, adding that the 16 at-home providers in the area who care for infants and are either registered or licensed by the state aren't enough to keep up with demand.
"The real need is for young-baby care," she said. "We have a lot of young parents out here."
Lieson Clemons, who lives in Sahuarita and runs a child-care facility in Tucson, said that shortage of infant-care providers compounds the overall problem, because parents typically want to place all their children at the same facility rather than running around to two or more locations.
"If you're not offering care for younger infants, you're not going to get most people to take their older kids there," said Clemons, director of The Children's Center by C&K.
Blohm was lucky — she was able to get Caydn and her daughter, Kylyn, who's 4, into Shepherd's Fold, in Green Valley.
The facility is near the family's home in Santo Tomas Villas, off Duval Mine Road, but it's still a challenge to drop off and pick up the kids. That's because she works in Downtown Tucson and her husband, Mark, works at the Raytheon plant, just south of Tucson International Airport.
"We do a lot of trading off, depending on who's available," she said.
Care for "wobblers"
Palmer, Shepherd's Fold director, said hers is the only facility in the area that provides care to "wobblers" — infants between 1 and 2 years old who aren't yet toddlers.
"That means I have quite a waiting list," she said. "I have people who get on the list before they even have their child."
But she offers care to only six kids in that age group because they require so much attention.
"The problem," Umstead said, "is (that) very few people want to invest in caring for children that age. You have to have one adult for every four or five children. You also have to have a diapering facility.
"It's just a needier population," she said.
Barbara Snodgrass, director of Los Niños del Valle — the third licensed child-care facility in the area, and the oldest — said that's how parents get into her facility's program for 1-year-olds.
"I have a waiting list of 100 children," she said. "They (parents) call before they're born. I have some who are listed as unborn."
High cost of facilities, land
Clemons said the main obstacle to establishing more child-care facilities in Sahuarita is a lack of existing facilities, and a lack of land affordable for child-care providers.
"The cost of the land is too high," she said, and that adds to the "enormous" cost of building a new facility.
Kathy Ward, Sahuarita's economic-development director, said town officials are working to recruit child-care operators who will expand into the area.
The officials also are negotiating with landowners and developers to find land for a facility, said Ward, who co-chaired the Town Manager's Committee on Childcare.
Committee members also are putting together a child-care resource guide, which will list all at-home child-care providers who are registered with the state Department of Economic Security.
They also worked with the Sahuarita Unified School District, which in April opened its Early Childhood Center.
Director Carol Webb said the center, which can accommodate 168 children, has a few spots available now. But the facility does not provide care for kids 1 and under — the type of child care that is hardest to find around Sahuarita, Umstead said.
"So we have no child-care center caring for infants under 1," she said.
Ward said town officials and other community leaders take the issue very seriously, because it also can hurt the town's economic prospects.
"From an economic-development standpoint, it's a very important issue," she said. People have to be happy where they live, and a big part of that is knowing they have access to good child care, so they can go to work and know their kids are safe."
● Contact reporter Tim Ellis at 807-8414 or at tellis@azstarnet.com.
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