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

DATE: SUNDAY, January 16, 1994                   TAG: 9401160084
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CHILD-CARE NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED

The council announced Friday that it will serve as the Roanoke-region base for a federally funded program called Centers for Families That Work. The program - administered through the Virginia Council on Child Day Care and Early Childhood Programs - is designed to help working families, regardless of income, locate and select affordable, quality child care.

Funded in part by the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant, the initiative will provide a kind of "Consumer Reports" service for child care, something that has been lacking statewide, said Mary Ellen Verdu, executive director of the child-care council.

"We're hoping the centers are a step toward correcting that problem," Verdu said. "The centers are intended, at least in the pilot phase, to look at reaching all parents who are working and in need of information on child care."

The centers also will help low-income parents get around the often cumbersome task of obtaining the child-care subsidies available to them under the federal grant. The centers will be testing a new debit card voucher system for parents, streamlining the administrative process by computer and providing "a very efficient system of delivering subsidies," Verdu said.

The grant will provide $275,000 in subsidy funding to low-income families served by the Council of Community Services' center.

Three agencies in Virginia were chosen for the three-year pilot program. The others were the Office for Children in Fairfax County and the Norfolk Planning Council.

The Council of Community Services' center will serve families in the Roanoke and New River valleys and the Alleghany County, Franklin County and Martinsville/Henry County areas.

The center will enhance the child-care resource and referral program the council has operated since the early 1980s, said Pam Kestner-Chappelear, the council's associate executive director.

"Initially, we became involved through corporate contracts and as time has gone on we have expanded that program to the general public," she said. "Unfortunately up until this time, funding has been quite short to cover child-care resource and referral. So we're very excited to be the rural site for Centers For Families That Work in the state of Virginia."

The council's office at 502 Campbell Ave. in downtown Roanoke will serve as the program's central office for the Roanoke region. A satellite office in Martinsville will focus on public awareness in the Pittsylvania, Patrick, Henry and Franklin county areas.

A child-care resource and referral program at Virginia Tech will serve as another satellite office.

For additional information, contact Teri Blankenship, project director, at 985-0131 or (800) 717-3377. The toll-free number will not be availabl until Jan. 24.