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SILVERTONAPPEAL.COM ❚ WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 21, 2019 ❚ 3A Child care The Statesman Journal found Continued from Page 1A All 36 Oregon counties are considered child care deserts by national standards because of the limited number of day care spaces available. ing when it’s so expensive to run, yet what parents can pay doesn’t cover the cost of actually running that care.” ❚ Children outnumber regulated child care slots by more than 3 to 1. The best ‘within our grasp’ After Angela’s leave ended, she and Alex began staggering their work sched- ules. She would start early in the morn- ing. He would start later in the day. Fam- ily members alternate days babysitting to fill in the gaps. “Our family and friends have been super supportive, and we couldn’t do it at all without them,” she said. They know they are not the only ones frustrated with the cost and availability of quality care. Of their friends, they are the only family with both parents work- ing. The schedule leaves them busy and apart for most of the day, but the couple agrees it helps them communicate bet- ter and work as a team. “It can be hard to find time together as a couple,” Angela said. “Because I work early, I go to bed early, so by the time my husband gets home we might have a couple of hours together as a family in the evening, including maybe an hour together alone if we can get the baby to bed on time.” When he works a night shift, she doesn’t see him at all. “It can be stressful, but we both want what is best for our family and this is the best we currently have within our grasp,” Angela said. Their experience has made Angela passionate about advocating for paid leave for both parents. She sees her Eu- ropean co-workers struggling less with balancing work and family because they have more support and paid leave. “In my opinion, the U.S. is very be- hind on the times,” she said. “I think we are heading in the right direction, but we still have a long way to go.” The in-betweens Mariah Dietz spent years as a stay- at-home mom. When she and her now-ex-husband bought a house in West Salem, she got a job with the state to help with bills and insurance. Day care cost her $2,500 a month in the summertime for her three children. But after insurance, taxes and union dues, she was only bringing home about $1,600 each month. They soon began using some of her husband’s pay to cover the gap. Dietz considered them lower middle class, but their income put them in an in-between area: They made too much to qualify for DHS child care subsidies yet they made too little to pay for it on their own. “That’s when we decided to have me go back to staying at home with the kid- dos,” she said. Still, the financial stress weighed heavily on their marriage. A year later, Dietz and her husband divorced. Now a single mom, Dietz went back to work as a bookkeeper. She qualified for assistance through DHS but had to cover the $300 co-pay for her two youngest children to attend day care. The help is precarious, she said. If she gets child support or loses her job, she loses the assistance. The latter hap- pened just a few weeks ago. Dietz said after both her daughters got strep throat — one after the other — she missed two weeks of work and was laid off. “In a day care facility, if your kids are sick, then you can’t go to work,” she said. It starts a cycle, she said. And for jobs with no paid sick leave or strict time off policies, that cycle can mean losing your job. Many families choose to have one of the parents, usually the mother, stay home because of the stress and cost, she said. Their careers are put on pause, and the stay-at-home parents babysit or resort to direct sales. “I know Oregon has one of the high- est child care costs in our nation but our pay isn’t comparable,” Dietz said. “It’s such a struggle. I’m well-educated, I have college degrees, but especially in our area, a lot of employers don’t pay (enough).” Sex abuse and safety For Dietz, the single mom with three kids, the fear of abuse at child care turned into reality. One of her children was abused at a licensed home day care. She learned of the abuse a year after it happened, and law enforcement told her due to the level of detail her daugh- ter was able to provide — which is typ- ical for a very young child — they were unable to move forward with prosecu- tion. She’ll never trust home-based care again. Dietz switched to a child care center, figuring with more staff and structure, her children would be safer. It’s more ex- pensive, but she said it’s worth the trade-off. Recent sex abuse investigations in- volving babysitters, unlicensed day cares and licensed facilities in the Salem area have many parents concerned. In 2018, 55-year-old Jeffrey Rauch ❚ Only 8% of infants and toddlers in Marion County have access to a child care slot. ❚ Tuition rates for most infant and tod- dler care have more than doubled since the 1990s. ❚ Statewide, the number of regulated child care slots has declined by about 5,500 since 1999. ❚ Reports of illegal child care facilities are on the rise. Mariah Dietz with her daughters, Lauren, 6, and Juliette, 5, outside their apartment complex in Salem on July 18, 2019. Dietz, a single mom, was fired after taking too much time off work when her daughters got sick. ANNA REED / Coming Wednesday: Paying for child care isn’t the only problem Oregon par- ents face. Just finding an opening can be a huge hurdle. STATESMAN JOURNAL Angela Tipton and Alex Tipton hold their son, Ares, at their home in west Salem on July 17, 2019. MICHAELA ROMÁN / STATESMAN JOURNAL was sentenced to 31 years in prison for sexually abusing two girls at an unli- censed Salem day care run by his wife. The same year, Quinlyn Harden, 25, was accused of sexually abusing five children at a licensed day care owned by his mother, Ceola Harden. Her license for Stinky Feet Childcare in Independ- ence was revoked after the abuse allega- tions surfaced. A complaint filed with the Office of Child Care accused Ceola Harden of al- lowing her son, who never underwent a background check with the central reg- istry, to have unfettered access to the children in her care. According to the complaint, a partner agency confirmed Harden knew about her son’s inappropriate behavior and told the child victim, “It’s okay. I’ll take care of it. Don’t tell your mom.” And just last month, William Gib- bens, 36, of Salem, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for sexually abusing and sodomizing a 5-year-old girl he was babysitting. According to court records, the abuse occurred when Gibben’s wife, who was the day nanny for the girl and her two siblings, left the children in his care. Gibbens, a convicted felon, was pre- viously convicted of unlawful use of a weapon and unlawful possession of a destructive device. After Gibben’s arrest, prosecutors said three more children disclosed being abused by him. Some believe the higher rates of sex crimes in Marion County — Salem has almost twice as many sex crimes report- ed per capita as Portland — can be at- tributed in part to the lack of affordable day care options, allowing predators easier access to children. During a 2018 interview with the Statesman Journal, Salem police Detec- tive Scotty Nowning said a majority of the sex crimes that he investigates in- volve nonrelated persons abusing chil- dren under their watch. Parents often leave their children with people they shouldn’t because they can’t afford proper child care, Nowning said. “Here is a seemingly good-natured person willing to watch their kids, but that person is actually someone who of- fends against them,” he said. “We see that a lot.” Who’s in charge? The Office of Child Care, the agency tasked with inspecting child care facil- ities, has eight licensing specialists and two investigative specialists that cover the Salem area. The inspectors conduct announced and unannounced visits and will con- duct additional unannounced visits if they received a complaint. During the visits, inspectors make sure every child is supervised, staff has undergone background checks, safe sleeping and eating practices are en- forced and records for training, staff and each child are maintained. The number of reports of illegal pro- viders statewide spiked last year at 115. Only 74 were reported in 2017. And as of May 30, 53 unlicensed and licensed pro- viders were reported to be providing il- legal child care in Oregon. Child care complaints, which have been on an upward trend since 2014, also hit a record high in 2018 at 1,801. Melanie Mesaros, the spokeswoman for the Early Learning Division, said parents can request inspection reports from the facility or from the Office of Child Care. Inspection information will soon be available online through the Child Care Safety Portal. Information on fatalities and serious injuries are available online oregonear- lylearning.com. “Over the past two years, directives from Early Learning System Director Miriam Calderon and Governor Kate Brown have led to improvements to strengthen Oregon’s child care licensing system,” Mesaros said. The Early Learning Division has been given more authority from the Legisla- ture to investigate facilities and in- crease penalties for those providing ille- gal care, and the agency increased its number of field staff who and they are doing more unannounced inspections, she said. The ‘crisis’ goes to the Capitol Proponents of affordable, safe child care took the fight to the Oregon Capitol this legislative session, working to pass about 10 bills targeting the availability, cost and safety of care. Some, like HB 2024, which will create additional infant and toddler care under the program “Baby Promise,” passed handily through both chambers. Others, like a proposed bill seeking to reduce co-pays for Oregon’s child care assistance programs, died in commit- tee. Rep. Karin Power, D-Milwaukie, who testified in favor of the bill, said the program has one of the highest co-pays in the nation. A parent testified in favor of the bill said her co-payment skyrocketed to $1,200 a month after she received a $0.60 raise and a bonus. Her provider, knowing she couldn’t afford the new payment, ended their care and had her daughter’s things ready at pick-up time. Power, one of the few legislators with a young child in day care, backed several care-related bills, including one estab- lishing a task force to study the access of to quality, affordable child care. “We know that the current system doesn’t work — for families, for child care providers or to support the work- force and business planning that em- ployers need,” she said during testimo- ny. Another bill gave the Early Learning Division of the Oregon Department of Education more investigatory tools and more power to hold child care providers accountable for safety lapses and abuse. The bill passed unanimously in both houses. Sen. Sara Gelser, D-Corvallis, who carried the bill on the Senate floor, said it would help hold facilities to the high- est safety standards. “When parents drop their children off at a child care facility regulated by the state, they should be confident their children will be safe and nurtured,” Gel- ser said. 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