Harvard Triples Available Funds For Childcare

Harvard will more than double the funds available for faculty and staff child care, Provost Harvey V. Fineberg '67 will announce today.

The change will increase the amount of need-based grant money given to faculty and staff members for child care from $105,000 to $300,000.

It will also increase from 50 to 75 the number of "emergency care hours" offered to faculty and staff members for care of children or elderly family members.

The decision comes on the heels of a report to the provost by an advisory committee on work and family which recommended increased child care funding in order to better meet faculty and staff needs, said Sarah Wald, assistant provost for policy and planning.

"[Child care is] an issue that we've heard a lot about from both staff and faculty," Wald said. "In the Boston area, child care is very expensive. We want to help as many people as we can."

Because this year's grant recipients have already been chosen, their grants were simply increased following Fineberg's decision. The increased child care hours are available immediately, Wald said.

The fund, which has been in existence for seven years, gives annual grants to help faculty and staff pay for licensed child care. Applicants' cases are reviewed on an individual basis each June, and about 50 applicants are given grants from $1,000 to $8,000 each year.

The University also subsidizes emergency care for children and elderly family members through a contract with the child care service Parents in a Pinch, which provides sitters on an emergency basis to registered members.

Mather House Master Sandra A. Naddaff '75, who has two children ages 9 and 14, said that such services were not available 14 years ago when she first came to Harvard. Naddaff, who said the changes are unlikely to affect her now that her children are older, praised the increases in funds and hours.

"I think they're wonderful," she said. "They will be an enormous help to faculty members who have young children and who need the kinds of support these services will provide."

Eliot House Senior Tutor Margaret Bruzelius '74, whose four older children are also past the need for daycare, said these changes would have been helpful when her children were younger.

"The first year I was here was one of those years when [my children] first got the chicken pox, and then they got pneumonia," she said. "I was really worried that I was going to go through the 50 hours--that [additional time] is something I could have used," Bruzelius said.

But one junior professor said the changes do not go far enough.

"Parents in a Pinch is a very specialized, particular kind of service that doesn't address regular everyday daycare needs," she said. "And for the scholarships, the money is in a single pool that serves staff and faculty, and you need to qualify financially.

"You need to compete and you need to qualify according to some mathematical formula," the junior professor added. "Faculty tend to look less needy than staff, so junior faculty are not always able to get the scholarships they would like to get."

The junior professor said that a child care subsidy for junior faculty, similar to current housing subsidies, might solve problems.

But Wald said she encouraged all faculty members to apply.

"Some people have erroneously assumed they wouldn't be eligible because their incomes are so high," she said. "But the group looks at each case on a case-by-case basis, looking at the whole financial status of the family. I hope that we can get the word out so that more people who will benefit will apply."

Fineberg could not be reached for comment yesterday.