Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, October 2, 1993                   TAG: 9310020106
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MAG POFF STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DOMINION'S CHILD-CARE CENTER FINDS A FRIEND IN FIRST UNION

First Union Corp., which acquired the center in March along with the bank, will do much more than retain the facility on Plantation Road.

As workers at the operations center arrived Friday with their children, they learned that the bank will expand and upgrade the center. It will take in more children and provide scholarships for employees who need financial help.

Parents knew when they drove up that the center would continue, said Joan Hope, who handles employee family issues for First Union in Charlotte, N.C.

The Dominion sign was gone, replaced by one that renamed the facility First Union Child Development Center. The bank provided balloons and food for a celebration.

One mother arrived in a clown costume with favors to pass out to the children.

Ben Jenkins, president of First Union National Bank of Virginia, said the company surveyed employee needs and how they viewed the facility. Then it decided to:

Expand the building and playground, adding equipment and toys.

Boost enrollment from 70 to 94 children, thus taking care of the current waiting list.

Establish a $50,000 scholarship fund based on need. The current fee is $105 a week for infants and toddlers and $66 a week for children aged 2 through 5.

The center is accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Hope said its standards exceed state requirements and fewer than 5 percent of facilities nationwide are accredited.

First Union has no other facility like it in its multistate system.

"We will learn from this one," Hope said. "The pressure is going to be on us" to duplicate the program in other communities in its system, she said.

Hope credited Jenkins with persuading the bank to retain the unique facility in Roanoke.

Nine parents who work for First Union downtown use the center, but most of the parents are employed at the adjacent bank operations center.

Jenkins said the center helps to "balance the work-family issues." He said employees who use the center are assured their children get first-class services.

For the bank, the center answers a lot of productivity issues, said personnel director David Furman. Having the center, he said, helps it retain good employees.