Boston-based ChildrenFirst Inc. recently opened its first Orange County corporate-sponsored backup childcare center in Irvine.
A consortium of OC companies, mostly professional service firms, will use the center including Deloitte & Touche, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Latham & Watkins, O’Melveny & Myers and Morrison & Foerster. The largest member of the consortium is Taco Bell, whose corporate headquarters is located next door to the center, at 2010 Main Street.
“It’s the best fringe benefit we have,” said Ella Russell, a legal secretary for Morrison & Foerster. Russell’s regular provider is on campus at her 8-year-old daughter’s school. But during Easter break when her regular daycare provider is closed, Russell anticipates using ChildrenFirst’s center.
Backup care is a rapidly growing segment of the childcare industry. Ettie Graham, manager of human resources for Deloitte & Touche, said it decided to offer supplemental childcare assistance, instead of regular childcare, because most of its employees already had childcare arrangements.
But a growing reason for the increasing number of companies offering emergency childcare, is because they see it as an “equitable” perk, Guadagno said. If a large company like Taco Bell, for instance, opened an onsite childcare center, it would open with an immediate waiting list, therefore, all of the eligible employees wouldn’t be able to take advantage of benefit.
Backup care is also being touted by childcare experts as a relatively inexpensive and effective way to reduce absenteeism and recruit and retain employees. In addition, they say benefits like backup childcare increases morale and productivity. And more and more companies, facing losses of approximately $1,100 per year per employee due to failed childcare arrangements, are buying into those claims.
The ChildrenFirst consortium companies pay an annual membership fee, based on their number of employees. For example, a single annual membership for a company with 200 to 400 employees is $29,900.
“A lot of these companies couldn’t afford to do something like this on their own,” said Sharon Guadagno, vice president of national sales for ChildrenFirst. Employers investing in their own onsite center would typically invest at least $1 million in building the center, then pay yearly management fees upwards of $200,000.
And with a backup center, companies still get the usual childcare management company amenities like higher-quality care for their employees’ children. ChildrenFirst centers are accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (centers have to be open a year before becoming accredited) which,among other quality assurances,means the centers maintain teacher-to-child ratios better than those mandated by the state.
Parents can use the benefit 20 times per year; the company either subsidizes the full cost or charges a co-pay fee. Morrison & Foerster, with 100 OC employees, charges $10 per family each time an employee uses the center. Deloitte & Touche, with 800 employees, subsidizes the cost. About half of the employers that offer backup childcare pay the full cost while the other half charge their employees a co-pay, Guadagno said.
ChildrenFirst was founded in 1992 and operates 19 other centers in Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Minnesota, Jersey City, N.J. and Chicago. A spokesman said the company doesn’t have immediate plans to open another center in OC but intends to open more facilities in the California market. Its chief competition is San Rafael-based Knowledge Beginnings, which has about 75 corporate-sponsored centers but none yet in OC and Boston-based Bright Horizons Family Solutions, which operates 30 backup centers.
