NEW FIRM HELPS PARENTS IN DAY CARE SEARCH

Jeann Linsley, Staff Writer

When Kathy Kacher was pregnant with her first child, she was struck by a puzzling contradiction.

People who set out to buy a home usually search for an expert to help them arrive at a decision. But, she realized, when it comes to an even more important life decision - entrusting their children to a day care provider - most parents struggle on their own to find the right person.

"If you go out and buy a house, you have a Realtor, but when you're placing your child in day care, you're basically on your own," said Kacher, 27, while relaxing at a small desk in her Burnsville office. However, she said, "alone, I think it's pretty close to impossible to find someone who meets your needs."

Kacher, motivated by her own difficulties in finding day care, created Minnesota Child Care Innovations Inc. last summer to help other parents find quality, reasonably priced child care.

She sells her service to corporations, which then offer it to their employees. Kacher's business is one of only a few private day care referral services in the state.

The company buying the service is obligated to purchase a minumum of 25 referrals or listings. At $50 per referral, that amounts to a minumum cost to the company of $1,250. So far, five companies in Twin Cities suburban areas have bought Kacher's service.

Kacher's main competitors are county and other community-based, non-profit referral services, which provide much of the same information to parents free of charge and also market their services to corporations for a fee. Ramsey County's referral system for companies costs exactly the same as Kacher's, for example.

The company receives updated listings of home day care providers and day care centers in the seven-county metro area, including cost, hours and other basic data. Although Kacher said she's unable to personally check every provider on her list, when a client selects someone, she tries to obtain a personal look at that day care provider through an interview conducted by herself or trained staff members.

The interviewers obtain information such as whether the providers take kids on field trips, whether they like to be outdoors with the children and, whether there are nearby libraries, parks and other amenities.

They also note how the providers relate to youngsters and how much attention they pay to the children, even during the interview, Kacher said.

"It shortcutted a lot of steps we would have had to take on our own," said Becky Aistrup, who used Kacher's service through her company to find day care for her 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Elizabeth.

"When you're looking for a provider you're kind of in a bind... . You've just had a child and you don't know where to start," she said.

Aistrup, director of business development for Bio-Metric Systems Inc. of Eden Prairie, had definite ideas about what she wanted in a child care provider, and Kacher's service helped her to pick the right one.

"I wanted people who had organized activities so that the children weren't entertained by television all the time," Aistrup said.

Kacher emphasizes that even though she and her staff can screen the providers, the ultimate decision rests with the parent, and parents must ask the provider some common-sense questions to make sure the service offered matches their needs.

Jim Blinkman, personnel director for Centel, a Burnsville telephone company, said his firm chose Kacher's service because its listings were extensive and provided employees with more detailed child care information than was offered by a local, community-based group.

"This is a very low cost benefit that has a very high return," Blinkman said. "The hassles around getting a good provider can be very distracting to the work force."

Kacher has had difficulty convincing some companies of the need to help employees find day care. She tries to convince employers that day care assistance will reduce stress, absenteeism and tardiness among employees.

Although human resource personnel are receptive to the idea, sometimes "upper management is not sensitive enough yet," she said. "Some companies are just not ready."

"It's a brand new industry," said Jan Morlock, of the St. Paul based Women's Economic Development Co., an agency that helps women entrepeneurs. "It's really kind of a fresh idea."

Indeed, Kacher's idea was just new and non-traditional enough that she had difficulty obtaining a bank loan to get started. Still, she managed to secure a personal loan, and WEDCO helped her develop a business plan and keeps tabs on her progress.

Despite the difficulties she has encountered, Kacher sees a prime niche for her business in a society where parents often must sort through a morass of child care red tape and where demand far outstrips supply.

Statistics for child care in the metro area confirm the need for day care, particularly for younger children.

Traditional child care networks consisting of friends and relatives have dried up because those individuals - mostly women - have entered the work force, thus creating need for more and better referral services, said Tom Copeland, of Resources for Child Caring Inc., a non-profit agency that provides Ramsey County with child care referrals.

In Dakota, Ramsey, Anoka and Washington counties, there are an average of 45 day care slots for every 100 children who need day care, said Copeland, whose agency conducted a recent survey.

The survey indicated that 26,572 children need day care in Ramsey County alone, compared with about 12,400 available day care slots in that county.

The situation is worse in outstate Minnesota, Copeland said. Statewide, there are an average of 30 day care slots for every 100 children younger than 6 with working parents.

Kacher maintains that her service provides more up-to-date information on day care vacancies than do county referral services.

When she was pregnant, Kacher said she called 11 day care providers on a county list before she found one with openings.

"We had a real hard time finding child care," she said. "The resources were so limited."

Kathy McDonald, who works at Colle and McVoy Inc. in Bloomington, which uses Kacher's service, said it was simpler to use than county referral services. The county list was long, and some of the providers were far from her Eagan home, McDonald said. "I'd probably still be looking if I had to do it on my own," she said.

Copeland said counties have improved their referral services recently because state laws governing those services have become stricter. Ramsey County contracts with Copeland's agency to provide a referral service that lists all licensed day care centers and homes in the county.

And the Minnesota Legislature has appropriated money to beef up community-based referral services both locally and in outstate Minnesota, said Heidi Oxford, director of the Child Care Information Network, a non-profit, community-based referral service.

Oxford said her network, the first of its kind in the nation, offers a service very similar to Kacher's. She acknowledged that her agency views Kacher's company as a competitor, but said that can only improve referral services overall.

Kacher said her status as a for-profit company gives her an edge.

"As a for-profit, we're more competitive and we're more aware of the needs of our customers," she said.

Copeland said he couldn't argue against competition. But he cautioned, "I think it's important for parents and employers to understand the differences and to compare what services are being offered."

Though Kacher's business is small, she is confident it will grow, and she already is making plans for an "eldercare" referral service to help individuals seeking care for parents or other elderly relatives.