Reporter Volume 25, No.10 November 4, 1993

By SUE WUETCHER
News Bureau Staff

In addition to the critical task of caring for children, day care as
an enterprise can help create jobs and provide opportunities for
entrepreneurship in the inner city and in disadvantaged communities, a
UB law professor suggests.
	"Child-care enterprise can be a vehicle for community-based
economic development," says Peter Pitegoff, associate professor in the
School of Law. "Day-care ventures that balance community
accountability with worker opportunity can be a lynchpin for attacking
poverty."
	But in order to be successful, Pitegoff warns in a recent
issue of the Georgetown Law Journal, such ventures must confront the
harsh economic realities of providing child care and a public attitude
that undervalues child-care work.
	These enterprises must have an "internal culture" that values
the work of caregivers while creating the "external links"--to
government, charitable and corporate resources--that will make it
possible for the enterprises to succeed financially, he says.
	One such example, Pitegoff points out, is the Childspace Day
Care Centers in Philadelphia, a worker-owned-and-operated enterprise
serving more than 200 children at two sites, with plans to open a
third site next year. Childspace, he writes, "explicitly demonstrates
the positive link between quality care and quality jobs."
	Another example is the East Aurora Community Nursery, Inc., a
collaboration between community-based child-care providers and a large
corporation--Fisher-Price, Inc.
	Community economic development, in contrast to traditional
economic development, is concerned as much with social goals as with
economic growth and seeks greater democratic influence over a local
economy and equitable allocation of costs and benefits, Pitegoff
notes.
	Child care is well-suited to these goals for a variety of
reasons, he maintains:
	n Providing child-care services supports labor participation,
since affordable child care is essential for parental employment,
particularly in low- and moderate-income communities. 
	n Community-based child-care programs with a quality
educational curriculum will strengthen the social and economic
infrastructure of the community in the long-term. 
	n  The need for child-care services is growingQby 1995 an
estimated two-thirds of all preschool children will have mothers in
the work force.
	n  Child-care ventures can create jobs at less cost than
businesses that require investments in machinery and inventory and are
less vulnerable to global competition than the struggling
manufacturing sector.
	Pitegoff cautions, however, that child-care jobs usually are
low-wage, with limited benefits and little chance for advancement.
This kind of work environment, he says, leads to high turnover and
undermines the quality of care provided, threatening the basic tenets
of community economic development--that the quality of jobs created is
as important as the quantity, and that the success of the enterprise
is measured in its social impact.
	The key, he says, is to raise the status of child-care work.
One way to help do so is to improve wages for child-care workers.
	Turnover at day care centers likely would decrease if wages
were higher, since many child-care workers leave their jobs due to
economic reasons.  Moreover, more men might enter the field if wages
were higher.  "Due in part to the misperception of men's work as more
worthy, gender integration might boost the societal status of
child-care work," Pitegoff writes.
	While substantially greater resources are needed to increase
professionalism and self-esteem for child-care work, he says
policymakers must understand the complexity and importance of the
issue in order to get those funds from public and private sources.
	Building bridges to institutions with available resources,
such as government and charitable sources or corporate businesses, is
imperative if day-care enterprises are to survive.
	Pitegoff points to the Childspace Day Care Centers as one
day-care enterprise successfully following a
community-economic-development approach.
	The worker-ownership structure reinforces a "participatory
culture" at Childspace, he says.  The workers help develop policies
that include a decent wage and benefits, the option for staff to bring
their children to work, support for workers' continuing education and
career opportunities within the organization. An affiliated nonprofit
corporation involving parents and community residents provides quality
and cost oversight and access to national funding sources.
	"The significance of Childspace is its intentional link
between the quality of child-care jobs and the excellence of
child-care service," Pitegoff writes. "While managing the
administrative, financial and programmatic demands of a day-care
operation for children, Childspace also has confronted the challenge
of overcoming societal attitudes that devalue child-care work and
workers."
	Creative strategies such as those exhibited at Childspace,
"can help make the case for attributing greater worth to child-care
work," he says.