A Breakthrough at Bellevue
Round-the-clock day care facility will be a first for ‘the city that never sleeps.’
NEW YORK
Some of the people working the hardest on behalf of a new day care center at New York’s Bellevue Hospital have children who are too old for day care.
But Cassie Bartley, a patient care coordinator in the hospital’s primary care area, well remembers what it used to be like to shuttle back and forth to bring her son, Rondell, now 8, to his day care center in the Bronx.
“I had to take two trains and a bus,” remembers Bartley, a member of AFSCME Local 768 (DC 37). On most days, that was an 80-minute commute. If there was an emergency at the center, she had to scramble to find someone to cover her shift. “It was incredibly stressful and expensive.”
Cynthia Hintzen, an office associate in the hospital’s specialty clinic, has an even more compelling reason to work for on-site child care at the hospital she’s worked at for more than 20 years.
Hintzen, a member of Local 1549, lost her son, Matthew, to a fire in an unlicensed day care center seven years ago.
After her son’s death, “I would not look for day care again,” says Hintzen quietly. Cynthia’s mother, Anna Folkes, a nurse technician who worked in the hospital’s ambulatory surgery area, retired to care for Hintzen’s second son, Jonathan. The boy, now 9, attends elementary school in the Bronx.
REALIZING A DREAM. For the hospital’s employees, a dream was realized this November when the hospital began renovations to turn an area formerly housing the hospital’s security force into a round-the-clock day care center.
The first-of-its-kind center for the city will be open 24 hours a day to serve not only children of employees, but also other workers in the area, according to Ralph Palladino, Local 1549’s part-time grievance rep, who co-chairs the hospital’s Child Care Committee.
DC 1707 members, who staff other child care facilities, will staff the new in-house facility.
Initially, the center is slated to have 39 slots, but with a “foot in the door” at present, the center’s organizers hope to eventually expand to include more openings and services, including before- and after-school care, and “drop-off facilities” for patients’ and employees’ children on an as-needed basis. Fees for the center will be on a sliding scale.
PRECIOUS SPACE. In a big city bureaucracy, the wheels of progress move slowly, but Palladino notes that a major step came in 1997, when the hospital agreed to allocate the space — a precious commodity in any hospital, but particularly in New York — rent-free.
After that, the next target was funding. Employees and union staff worked tirelessly applying for grants and lobbying the city council. They showed survey after survey of staff members who were desperate for child care. Hospital reps met individually with all the city council members from lower Manhattan to convince them of the need for affordable and accessible day care in the area.
They also made a formal presentation to the city council, which allocated $500,000 for the renovations. Another $60,000 came through the efforts of City Councilman Andrew Eristoff.
The employees still need to raise funds to cover architect’s fees, toys and equipment at the center, which may be open as early as next spring. The first donation came from DC 37, which has also been “generous with political, moral and technical support,” Palladino says. Several DC 37 locals have also contributed financially, and the Local 420 chapter chair has been very supportive.
TRACKING PRODUCTIVITY. The effort got high marks from local agencies because of the cooperation among the employees, the unions, hospital management and day care providers in setting up the center’s logistics. Palladino, who serves as a member of the labor caucus of Bellevue’s productivity committee, notes that studies have shown that employee productivity improves in sites with on-site child care facilities.
The union sees firsthand how workers can be whipsawed by the demands of working and raising children, he notes. “We’ve had people who had to leave work or not come in, because there was no one to stay home with their kids. If you leave them home alone, you could face a jail sentence. So the choice comes down to ‘job or jail.’”
Doug Whitfield, shop steward for Local 1549, agrees. “It’s not unusual to have a supervisor discuss a time and leave problem that’s rooted in problems with day care,” Whitfield notes. “An employee had to stay home with their kids because they didn’t have a baby sitter, or the relative who was caring for the child had something else they had to do. ... You can’t trust just anybody to take care of your kids.”
While it’s traditionally — and unfairly — been viewed as a “women’s issue,” the problem of adequate child care impacts many working fathers. Whitfield, the father of three, knows that only too well.
DOUBLE SHIFT. His wife works second shift in a Brooklyn resident home tending to the mentally handicapped. When she has to work a double shift because her relief doesn’t come in, “She can’t just leave. Then I’m stuck.”
Hintzen notes that variations on that scenario play out almost daily throughout the hospital, with employees with young children cared for in private homes or day care facilities scattered throughout the boroughs.
“It’s exciting that [the center’s] finally materializing,” says Hintzen. “It will help a lot of people — nursing mothers, single parents.”
Cynthia Hintzen is taking quiet pride in what’s developing at Bellevue. She speaks of it in terms of faith. “It’s like it happened in the Book of Genesis. You get something started. We got the location, then the funding.”
“And then,” she says with wonder, “it just explodes.”
By Chris Dodd
