Michelle Hefflin welcomes the idea of starting a National Child Care Hall of Fame. “I think any kind of recognition would be great,” said Hefflin, director of the Marriot Child Care Center on Fernwood Road.
The concept of a Hall of Fame for child care workers was devised by a group of five people over several years, but they’ve decided the time is now right.
The idea behind the Hall of Fame is to recognize the significance of the work which childcare providers are doing.
Childcare providers work long hours and are paid as little as $6 per hour while performing a critical service for the community, wrote Carderock resident Dan Lazorchick in a concept paper several years ago. “The situation in child care is basically the same today as it was then,” he said.
“The same group looked at it [in the past] and for whatever reason thought it was pie-in-the-sky,” said Lazorchick, one of the members of the group. But things have changed, and at a March 5 meeting at the Irish Inn at Glen Echo, the five-member group, which is operating as the hall’s steering committee, decided to move forward. “No more fussing around, we’re going to do it,” Lazorchick said.
“I think that people in the field think it is the right time,” said Arlene Altman of the Childcare group, a member of the steering committee. “There’s been a lot of studies, but there hasn’t been anything to recognize them.”
“Generally, I don’t think we get a lot of recognition,” Hefflin said, while she noted that her company, Bright Horizons, does try to recognize its employees.
LAZORCHICK WILL lead the steering committee, made up of Washington-area child care professionals, mostly because he didn’t have a full-time job, at least not before the project began. “I have a full-time job now,” he said.
They hope to model the hall on the labor hall of fame, which is currently in the lobby of the US. Department of Labor, where Lazorchick had worked. “We’ll benefit enormously from the mistakes of the Labor Hall of Fame,” he said.
ONE OF THOSE MISTAKES is that the labor hall of fame is stuck in one place. Since the people who this new hall seeks to recognize are typically paid low wages, very few of them will be able to afford the cost of a trip to visit it. “We’re going to take the hall to them,” Lazorchick said. “We’ll design a mobile exhibit.”
While the main Hall of Fame will be stationary, Lazorchick expects there to be a smaller version which can be taken around the country and sent up in temporary locations.
The cost of being a member of the hall will be minimal, $5 or $10 per year, said Lazorchick, also in keeping with the recognition that those who are in the field aren’t paid much.
Once it is up and running, the steering committee hopes that the hall, which they see as being made up of kiosks holding displays of people and memorabilia, could be brought the country to increase its visibility.
This mobility will also help with one of the main goals of developing the hall. “One of the big motivators for doing this is the fact of aloneness,” Lazorchick said. Some of the providers work out of their homes or in small centers where they do not have much chance to meet others in the field. “These people feel that nobody gives a damn,” Lazorchick said.
Before they can move the exhibit around, they need to find a permanent home, and members of the committee are currently looking at 11 sites in Washington. The Hall would not take up much space and the group would pay custodial expenses.
While the steering committee thinks that some people will be recognized posthumously, they plan that the majority of the inductees will still be living. “We want people to be able to enjoy it and be honored while they are still alive,’ Lazorchick said.
At this point, the Hall of Fame is little more than an idea, but the committee has expectations of something more. “We could fall flat on our faces, but we don’t think we will,” Lazorchick said. “We’re prepared to get pushed and pulled in any direction to make the right things happen.”
“I would expect that we would see this group stand on its own two feet and toddle along within the next year or so,” Altman said.