Child-Care Availability

* Re “Urgent Need for More Licensed Child Care Cited,” Aug. 5.

I want to thank Stephanie Stassel for her story on the Los Angeles County Child Care Needs Assessment report. I am one of the family child-care providers serving on the Los Angeles County Child Care Planning Committee that prepared this report. It is about time a reporter included information about the high vacancy rates in both family child-care homes and centers in Los Angeles County. Child-care providers struggling for lack of children have been very upset by the many sensational news stories calling for more, more and more child-care sites. I am so glad that Stassel included a Times survey showing that over half the sites polled had vacancies. She even noted that accreditation candidates had vacancies, demonstrating that openings are not entirely due to a lack of quality care.

Now that these factors are out in the open, maybe our community can do more to ensure that parents receive the subsidies and the information they need to find and use vacancies in quality child-care facilities. I hope that more parents will begin to ask for accredited child care so that more child-care providers will be motivated to go through the accreditation process.

Los Angeles County has a new child-care Web site where parents can obtain information about care available in their area (https://childcare.co.la.ca.us). Parents can also obtain the phone number of their local child-care resource and referral agency by calling (800) 543-7793.

NANCY WYATT

Reseda