SEMO DAY-CARE CENTER OPENS; EXPANSION OF SERVICE PLANNED

A handful of children gleefully slid head-first down the colorful, plastic slide Monday at Southeast Missouri State University's new Child Enrichment Center.

The campus center, housed in the Scully Building, opened Monday with 19 children enrolled, ages 3 to 5.

Not all the children are there at any one time. Some children are dropped off at different times and on different days.

At midmorning Monday, only seven children were being cared for in the state-licensed center.

The center serves children of university employees and students.

Initially, the center operates with a full-time, supervising teacher, four student workers and two graduate assistants.

Dr. Shelba Branscum, associate professor of human environmental studies, said Monday's opening is just the beginning. The university's long-range plan is to provide a wide range of in-house child care, including evening day care and sick-child care.

Other services include full- and part-time day care, modified drop-in services, developmental screening services, after school and before school programming, school-age tutoring, weekend programming, parent counseling, parent education classes, family activities, family assessments and summer enrichment classes.

It would require expanded staff and new quarters to provide all the services, said Branscum, a child-care specialist who helped develop the Child Enrichment Center.

Branscum said it could take four to five years before the center is running at full throttle. The goal is to serve children, ranging from day care for infants to after-school programs for 15-year-olds.

With the university offering an increasing number of evening classes, there is an increasing need for evening child care, said Branscum.

The university center isn't trying to compete with private day-care centers, Branscum said, adding that the school plans to provide child-care services strictly to its students, faculty and staff. It plans to provide services that aren't being provided by existing day-care facilities.

Welfare-to-work laws have increased the demand for child care as former welfare recipients seek job training and a return to the labor force, she said.

Branscum said there aren't enough day-care slots to accommodate all the area children that need care.

Southeast hopes to take advantage of new federal funding for campus child-care programs. The university could receive more than $300,000 a year in funding, which is based on a formula, Branscum said.

The money could be used to construct a building for the expanded Child Enrichment Center.

There isn't enough space in the Scully Building to house the center. The building, which houses the College of Education, also is home to the school's Child Study Center.

The Child Study Center provided limited, preschool programming for children from the community.

Eventually, plans call for incorporating the Child Study Center into the Child Enrichment Center.

Within three years, the Child Enrichment Center could be providing services to 500 children, Branscum said.

"The whole thing needs to be affordable and it needs to be accessible," said Branscum.

Fees range from $12 a day for university employees to $10 a day for students. Students can drop their children off for as little as two hours at a cost of $4 a child.

The center is open from 7:30 a.m. to about 5:15 p.m.

The university expects to spend about $150,000 to operate the center for the first year. That includes $40,000 in start-up costs from the university. Some of that money already has been spent to renovate space in the Scully Building.

Ultimately, the university plans to provide about 10 percent of the annual operating budget. Parent fees will generate about 50 percent of the cost. The rest of the revenue will come from grants, contractual services and direct subsidies.

Student Government, for example, has provided a subsidy to reduce the fees charged students.

"There are a lot of grants for child care," Branscum said. "There is money out there. It is there for the taking."

Branscum serves on a committee of employees and students that helped establish the child-care center.

Branscum said the committee found there is a need for on-campus child-care services.

More than 500 students and university employees responded to a child-care survey conducted in 1997.

Seventy-five percent said they had children that were in the age ranges that might be served by child-care services.

Fifty-five percent of respondents said they used off-campus day-care centers or home-care providers.

Thirty-three percent said they had missed work or class due to the lack of child care. Forty-two percent said they had on occasion brought their children to work or class because of the lack of child care.

With more and more older students attending college and two wage-earner families, the need for day-care services has increased, Branscum said.

Branscum said hundreds of colleges nationwide operate child-care facilities.

Branscum said universities like Indiana University have found that student parents who use campus child care have higher grade-point averages and quicker graduation rates than their counterparts.

Research also shows that in-house child-care services reduce absenteeism and improve productivity of employees, she said.