Major Child, Elder Care Effort Planned : Workplace: A dozen major companies move to create a nationwide network of facilities for employees’ families. It’s ‘unprecedented,’ one observer says.

In the first nationwide corporate effort of its kind, a dozen or more major U.S. companies are planning a coast-to-coast network of child and elder care services for their employees’ families.

The consortium, led by International Business Machines, eventually hopes to enlist 80 or so companies in programs expected to reach Southern California and other parts of the country as early as this year.

Workplace and child care experts said the plan, if adopted, would relieve employees of the often-distracting burden of arranging care for their young children and aging parents. It also could boost productivity.

The proposal represents an effort to fight the critical shortage of child and elder care faced by working families. It also is a symbolic gesture that the nation’s business community is serious about addressing the problem.

The network would expand local programs already operating in various communities. For instance, three companies working on the national program--IBM, Allstate Insurance and American Express--already are partners in a day care facility in Charlotte, N.C.

“For national corporations to come together to look collectively at meeting child care needs is definitely unprecedented,” said Patty Siegel, executive director of the California Child Care Resource and Referral Network. “This is really corporate America making an effort to do something.”

Siegel, whose organization is among those working with IBM on the national program, said that California has a smaller, statewide precedent that combines private and public funding: the $6-million Child Care Initiative, which recruits, trains and licenses day care providers. That program has been copied in Oregon and Michigan.

In some cases, the centers and programs funded by the IBM-led consortium are also expected to be open to families of non-employees.

“We want to improve the child care and elder care infrastructure in these individual communities,” said Adele Ambrose, a spokeswoman for American Telephone & Telegraph, another company working with the consortium.

AT&T;, Ambrose said, hopes “to do something that will both help the employees involved and also the communities in which they work.”

Companies involved in the effort emphasized that details have not been ironed out. “We’re all still in the discussion stage right now. Things are still up in the air,” said Al Orendorff, an Allstate spokesman.

The consortium--known as the American Business Collaboration for Quality Dependent Care, or by the acronym ABC--had planned to announce its program later this year. Word of the program, however, was disclosed Thursday afternoon by the Reuters news agency. Although details of the program were confirmed by various sources, officials at IBM could not be reached for comment.

Siegel said that she hoped to establish programs in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area as part of the initiative. “California is one of the first parts of the country to really get this in gear,” she said.

The program will be launched solely with corporate funding but, Siegel said, she hopes that the state will eventually contribute matching funds.

Ellen Galinsky, co-president of the Families & Work Institute, said the consortium is moving ahead to spur action by government, “because the private sector knows it can’t do it by itself.”

Galinsky, whose research organization is not involved in the consortium, said the national effort signals “a recognition in the corporate community that the availability of quality child care is poor. Studies have found that our future work force is at risk because of the poor quality.”

Employee productivity, she added, is “at risk” because of the burdens placed on workers by the lack of quality care.

Another reason for the initiative, said Allstate’s Orendorff, is that such programs are valuable benefits that help attract and retain good employees.

According to study by the Families & Work Institute, 55% of the nation’s big companies as of 1990 provided some form of child care assistance, such as referral services, and 13% had on-site care centers.

Employees who use the ABC child and elder care programs normally would pay for the services out of their own pockets. The funding provided by the consortium is expected to be used mainly to get programs started. In some cases, however, fees for the families of low-income workers might be subsidized.

By one estimate, about $25 million or more has already been committed by the companies. Talks among the companies began about a year ago. In some cases, preliminary plans call for new facilities to be built. In other cases, money would be provided to expand existing child and elder care programs.

Child Care Collaboration

The project: American Business Collaboration for Quality Dependent Care, a coalition of major businesses to increase child and elder care.

The goal: Raise as much money as possible by early September to build and expand as many child and elderly care facilities across the country as the money will allow--up to 30 new facilities.

The target cities: New York, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, Atlanta, Dallas, Seattle and Denver, among others.

The workings: Under the plan, companies will fund construction and expansion of facilities and the establishment of services and programs, but employees may have to pay for the care. Individual companies may subsidize an employee’s costs for child and elderly care services.

Source: Reuters