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.
For questions, comments and news
tips, email reporter Whitney Wood-
worth at wmwoodwort@statesman-
journal.com, call 503-399-6884 or fol-
low on Twitter @wmwoodworth
www.edwardjones.com
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