By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Staff Writer
Queen’s Sick Child Care, a warm and fuzzy baby-sitting service for sniffly children that has been part of working parents’ lives for the past 14 years, is closing its door March 30, and parents who used the service are upset.
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| Sarah Gronna said she has been using the Queen’s service for the past 11 years for her daughters, including 8-year-old Jessica. She said it has "saved her life."
Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser |
"I’ve been coming here for the last
11 years, since my daughters were newborns," said Sarah Gronna, a Honolulu District resource teacher and mother of two. "This has saved my life. And it’s the only place in the whole island that does this."
The comfy, hand-holding, thermometer-wielding service is closing for economic reasons, and because, on average, it’s only half full, said Gail Tiwanak, Queen’s Medical Center vice president for organizational planning and communications.
About 300-350 families sign up to use Sick Child Care annually at the rock-bottom rate of $5.50-an-hour. The service records about 2,000 visits a year.
"Basically, the program was developed to meet child care needs for our employees but also the community, but in the last several years it hasn’t been well utilized in general," Tiwanak said. "It was never intended to make money, but at this point it’s losing and costing us more to run than it’s generating."
Staffed by licensed practical nurses adept at serving saimin and coaxing medicine into little mouths, it has offered working mothers, especially, a stop-gap measure when children are sick, work can’t be missed and Grandma’s not available.
"When my eldest daughter was 2 and I was pregnant, I would not have been able to take sick days for myself unless I had this place to come to for my children," said Gronna, who still uses the service, although her daughters are now 8 and 11. "I would not be able to work except for this."
Tiwanak, too, used it when her children were in elementary school. But that was a long time ago, she said. Now they’re off in college.
Economic reasons
With attendance in general averaging seven children a day, and very few of them the offspring of Queen’s employees, the economics of keeping the unit open don’t make sense.
Program manager Sally Jones said Queen’s has always been caught in a dilemma of wanting to advertise the service to the general public, but being fearful about doing that and disappointing people because the unit was so small. And now it has become one of the victims of the Queen’s budget crunch.
"We’ve got to cut wherever we can," Jones said. "Eighty-four thousand (dollars, the unit’s annual budget) may not sound like a lot, but if you can find 10 other things like that, then you’ve got a (savings of) a million (dollars.)"
But she agrees that such a service is still necessary: "There’s a community need, no question."
Queen’s social worker Lori Shiroma-Chang will second that. "My daughter has gone there since she was 6 months old and she’s 5 and absolutely adores Sick Child Care. And because she’s right next door to me, I can stop in at any time." Shiroma-Chang said the amenity was one of the reasons she took the job.
The staff of four, including a nursing assistant, are expected to find positions in other parts of the medical center.
But Myrnelle Silva, who has been with Sick Child Care for nine years, is going to miss her young charges, and isn’t sure there will be space elsewhere to accommodate the Sick Child Care staff.
"We’re going to try and see if we can fit in somewhere here, but if not, we’ll have to go outside," she said.
‘Second home’
It’s Silva who has been hearing the complaints and concerns from parents.
"One parent said he’d sign a petition to stop them from closing, if there was one going around, but there isn’t," Silva said.
Other parents are asking if there’s an alternative.
"Many are saying, ‘If you guys close, you should have an alternative,’" Silva said. "And we’re saying, ‘We don’t.’ And they’re saying, ‘What are we going to do? I guess we’re just going to call in sick.’"
In her years caring for the little ones with runny noses, fevers and rashes, Silva has had just a handful of bigger problems. A few years ago, one child went into seizures because of a fever. And then there was the 9-year-old who managed to climb out a window, tossing items from his backpack at the nurses as he went.
"We had to chase him and bring him back," Silva said. "He didn’t want to be here."
But for Gronna’s children, and hundreds of others over the years, the unit has been a second home run by "aunties" where they’ve been comfortable and safe while their parents work.
And every year, regardless of whether they’ve been sick or not, they get a special birthday card sent by the staff.
"It was just a reminder that ‘Hey, we’re around,’" Silva said.
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