Thursday, June 21, 2001 • Vol 7, Issue 12
Complex enrollment policies preserve quality of child care at not-always-full Hutch Kids
By BRAD BROBERG
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Photo by Gordon Todd
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| Hutch faculty and staff listen intently as Nancy Myles, director of Hutch Kids Child Care, explains the complexities of the daycare’s enrollment policies during a June 7 forum at the Day Campus. |
Imagine waiting in a long line for a long time. Suddenly, somebody older or younger than you arrives and is ushered to the front.
That happens all the time at Hutch Kids. It's not a haphazard occurrence, but rather the result of an intricate mesh of policies aimed at maintaining quality child care.
Seemingly always full, enrollment at Hutch Kids is in truth surprisingly fluid - a fact that is sometimes muddied by misunderstandings about the nature of the waiting list.
"Don't listen to the rumors," said Nancy Myles, director, at a forum held earlier this month at the Day Campus. "Call me, tell me your child's birthday, and I'll give you the most realistic chances of enrolling your child."
Hutch Kids, an on-campus daycare serving infants through 5-year-olds, recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. During that time, it has earned a sparkling reputation for the quality of care it offers families from the Hutch, University of Washington and now the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.
Hanging from the wall inside the entry to Hutch Kids are several framed stories from national magazines praising the program. Even more revealing is the eager chatter and smiling faces of the 90-plus children who come every day to the bright, tidy, two-story building at the northeast corner of Minor Avenue and Valley Street.
The price of success
But with success comes a price - frustrated families who must wait to get in. Since 1997, the Hutch Kids waiting list has grown from 21 children to more than 160 - almost twice as many as actually attend Hutch Kids.
For some staff such as Renee LeBlanc, the possibility of obtaining on-campus daycare helped drive the decision to work at the Hutch. Now, the waiting list is forcing her to search elsewhere for child care.
"There's a difference when you can walk across the street and check on your baby," said LeBlanc, a research nurse in Infectious Diseases. She and her husband, Russ, are expecting a child in August. "I wanted to breast-feed my baby, but in a daycare outside the vicinity, I can't do it."
If families climbed the list strictly based on how long they'd been waiting, parents would have far fewer questions and Myles would have a much easier job. But it doesn't work that way, mainly because that wouldn't be best for kids, said Myles, who's guided Hutch Kids for all but the first few months of its history.
"There's an art to how you manage the waiting list," she said. "We have a philosophy of how we want to take care of children and we make decisions based on that."
Lunch-hour forum
Myles and Han Nachtrieb, the Hutch's vice president of Human Resources, co-hosted on June 7 a lunch-hour forum for faculty and staff to learn more about Hutch Kids enrollment policies and the factors that shape them.
More than two dozen people attended, including Laura Newcomer and her 6-week-old son, David. A staff scientist in the Public Health Sciences Division, Newcomer hopes to return to work in August - provided she secures child care. But she noted that daycares throughout the city, not just Hutch Kids, have long waiting lists.
Perplexing to many parents, the mechanics of the waiting list seem logical enough to Newcomer.
"It makes sense," she said. "It's confusing for some people, but you can follow it through like a flow chart."
Every June, children who already are enrolled move up to the next age group. Meanwhile, children on the waiting list shadow each new age group as they grow older.
Once enrolled at Hutch Kids, students are eligible to remain from infancy until they begin kindergarten. It's another way the program builds relationships, but it can become a barrier once someone misses the boat.
People like Newcomer - who so far has been unable to secure an infant slot for David - could remain at the dock forever if every infant currently enrolled stayed until he or she started school. To some degree, that's exactly what's happening to some families.
"Every year, we have 18 new infant slots, but we continue to have a backlog of older kids," Myles said.
Even so, openings can and do materialize in every age group sooner or later. The trick to taking advantage of openings is to be ready - and lucky.
"Sometimes, you show up at the right place at the right time, and a spot is available because we're looking for a child with a particular birthday," Myles said.
At Hutch Kids, it may not be enough for a child to fall within the age range of a particular group. That's because each group moves to the next age level as a unit.
If a child withdraws from a group in which most children are at the older end of the age range, Myles probably will not fill it with a child at the younger end, even if that child had been on the waiting list longer than anyone else.
Why? Because that child might not be ready to move with the group to the next age level, Myles said. If that's the case, couldn't the child simply remain behind? No, because the younger group that's moving up to that level probably is already full, she said.
Hutch Kids is a separate, non-profit corporation with its own board of directors. However, it relies on annual support from the Hutch, including rent, utilities, debt on construction and a direct cash subsidy, and is under contract with the Hutch.
More than anything, Hutch Kids believes in building strong relationships between children and staff members, Myles said. That's why staff-to-child ratios are consistently lower than state law requires and why children are grouped in narrower age ranges than is standard. It's also why students generally stay with the same teacher for a year and move from age group to age group as a unit.
On the flip side, those practices can force new families to wait longer than if Hutch Kids raised its ratios, shuffled individual children from group to group and clustered children in wider age ranges.
Some parents wonder why Hutch Kids doesn't raise rates. That way, it could accept more children and still emphasize relationships by hiring more staff. For one thing, Myles said, it's tough to find qualified staff these days.
More important, however, some Center staff couldn't afford higher rates. The result would be an "elitist" center catering only to upper-income brackets, she said.
Essentially full facility
Even if Hutch Kids modified policies that tend to limit enrollment, families still would face waits. That's because the facility, licensed for 97 children, is essentially full.
Hutch Kids leases its current home, and expanding the existing facility at its site isn't possible, Nachtrieb. Opening a second one "would be a very large undertaking," he said.
"I understand that Hutch Kids is incredibly valuable and, in its own way, supports the mission of the Center," Nachtrieb said. "We'll continue to evaluate the situation to provide the best child care we can."
Nachtrieb encourages faculty and staff to continue their support for Hutch Kids. He said he was impressed by the forum turnout.
"It begins a dialogue. That's what's important," he said. "Waiting in line is not comfortable, but if you understand why you're in line, it helps. I know that Nancy is doing everything she can to get people out of that line."
