Last Thursday night, Destiny and Gabriel Davis brushed their teeth, put on pajamas and read books before settling in to sleep.

But this bedtime routine didn’t take place at home. The siblings, ages 4 and 2, cozied up for the night at their child care facility.

Gaila Wold-Adams is one of just a few child care providers in Central Oregon to offer round-the-clock care to families who need to it.

Every week her schedule changes, based on the needs of the families she works with. Some weeks she works 18-hour days, seven days a week. Wold-Adams started offering round-the-clock care when her more traditional child care business began losing families due to the economy. She began offering flexible hours as a way to attract business but now she sees it as an essential service to the community and her personal calling.

Many parents in Central Oregon struggle to find quality child care they can afford. The problem intensifies when the parents’ needs are nontraditional. Some parents need a provider who can cover weekend or evening hours, others need to find a provider who can care for their child with special needs.

Cherri Davis — mother of Destiny and Gabriel — isn’t sure how she would have made it without help from Wold-Adams. “We are really fortunate to have Gaila.”

When Davis first began taking her kids to Wold-Adams about a year ago, the single mom was in school and working at Rite Aid, and then started training for a new job. Now — because she was able to go to school — she is a nurse’s assistant at a local nursing home. When her shift is over, Davis picks up her children from day care in their jammies, usually around 11 p.m. While Davis still has to work many evening shifts, she is working 40 hours a week and feels her life and the lives of her kids are much more stable.

Before finding Wold-Adams, Davis called at least five day care providers, none of whom could accommodate her needs. “A lot of people were nice, but were really strict in what they did,” said Davis of the time restrictions.

“It was really frustrating,” said Davis, who doesn’t have any family in town. “I didn’t have anybody else to watch them for me, I had to have child care.”

In addition to needing child care on evenings and weekends, Davis also wanted to make sure the provider would be able to safely care for her daughter, who has cerebral palsy. Wold-Adams has experience working with children with special needs, so it was a great fit.

Davis feels, with Wold-Adams’s help, she was able to get to a place where she wanted to be. She encourages other parents who are struggling to keep their heads up. “It’s going to get better; you can’t let it get you down.”

Off-hours care

“Finding off-hour care and also infant care is difficult,” said Patty Wilson, program manager for NeighborImpact Child Care Resources. The nonprofit group manages a database of providers in the tri-county area and helps parents find the right fit. Wilson says there are 360 child care providers listed in Central Oregon. Out of those, Wilson says, only 87 offer evening care and 75 offer weekends (60 providers offer both.) Wilson says most of those providers who offer off-hours care are family in-home child cares. Wilson says there are “limited options.”

She says finding care for a child with special needs can also be a challenge. “There is always a need,” said Wilson. “It’s hard to find a good match for your child.”

Wold-Adams began offering nontraditional hours of child care more than two years ago “in response to the collapse of the economy.” She went from 12 families down to two “practically overnight.” Wold-Adams is a single mom and felt she needed to offer “extreme flexibility” in order to keep her business running.

She caters to many families who work retail or medical jobs — “a lot of single parent families desperate for work.” Wold-Adams says these parents are often “forced to take whatever job comes their way.” And that can mean strange, constantly shifting hours. Every week, parents’ schedules shift and so does Wold-Adams’s.

Redmond resident Jennifer Booth is another rare child care provider who opens her home 24-hours a day, seven days a week. The retired fourth-grade teacher started by watching her own grandkids and then added a few more children. About 12 children are currently registered, but only three or four stay with her at any one time.

She says the arrangement suits her causal, kid-friendly lifestyle — all of the kids call her Grandma.

But the need for services like Booth’s is evident: She doesn’t advertise, yet rarely has openings. One family drove from Bend every day to use her services.

Wilson says about half of providers who offer evening or weekend care charge more for the service, the rest charge the same rate for all hours. On average, child care for infants and toddlers costs $2.50 to $3.50 an hour — more in Bend, Redmond, Sisters and Sunriver, less in Crook and Jefferson counties and La Pine, says Wilson. She says parents of special needs children are not typically charged a higher rate.

Alternative solutions

Randa Bates could not find a child care provider in Central Oregon that was a good match for her family’s needs. Bates and her husband, Brian, are both nurses who work 12-hour shifts. This means they need child care from 6:45 a.m. until about 7:45 p.m. for their daughters, ages 4 and 2. They have gone through several child care arrangements. Her husband stayed home for a time to care for their oldest, when she was a baby. Then they found a child care center that worked for about a year. But Bates says they were constantly being charged per minute for dropping off early or picking up late. Once her husband also started working 12-hour shifts, the arrangement no longer worked because the center didn’t offer late enough hours.

“We had looked extensively,” said Bates. “There are not a lot of options out there.” She says they went to a lot of places and interviewed a lot of people but none were a good fit. Bates says she and her husband are in a unique situation; most couples she knows who both work 12-hour shifts tend to work opposite hours. But they didn’t want to sacrifice time together.

Ultimately they settled on hiring two nannies to care for the girls about two or three days a week. One nanny works morning until 5 p.m., the other works 5 to 8 p.m.

Nannies are more expensive than other types of child care. Wilson says nannies in their database charge a range between minimum wage ($8.80 per hour) and $13 per hour.

Bates says it can be tough to swallow paying a little extra for child care, especially when the economy is down. But they try to figure out how to make it work.

The pieces are always moving, however. “Every month I go through and piece together a schedule,” said Bates. “I don’t think it will change. This is what we are going to do for the next 18 years.”

Special needs

Off-hours care isn’t the only need that can make finding child care challenging.

Tumalo mom Dianna Hansen had a difficult time finding care for her daughter Victoria, who has Down syndrome. Many places turned her down. “We were devastated at the responses as to us,” Hansen said. “She did not need anything extra, she was just a kid.”

Hansen said these places based their decision not on Victoria and her needs — they never met her — but on assumptions.

Hansen finally found a good fit at local child care center, Growing Tree, where she says her daughter was treated “like all the other kids and us just like all the other families.”

Bend mom Jeanette Rivas wasn’t so lucky. She “went through the gamut” to find child care for her son Mateo, 9. He has been in all sorts of child care arrangements, but none have been successful. Rivas recently quit her job in order to care for the boy, who has epilepsy, Asperger’s syndrome, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and a mood disorder.

“We had a hard time keeping him in a spot,” said Rivas. At first, they didn’t know Mateo’s diagnosis.

He ended up moving from place to place — he threw a chair when he didn’t get his way and once lashed out at a girl. In these cases, Rivas says she understands why Mateo had to leave, but it is also frustrating. Rivas says in another case, they learned the caregiver was keeping Mateo in an enclosed space all day long.

“There is no facility in Bend to help him,” said Rivas. “It’s a huge problem.”

At one point, the family considered moving to a larger town in order to find more services.

Rivas left work whenever Mateo’s school called with an incident. She realized she either had to quit or be fired. Right now, her son is out of school as they are waiting to get into day treatment. Rivas hopes this option works and wishes there were more choices.

“If I was in a bigger city, we would have more things to fall back on,” said Rivas.

She offers a few tips for parents who are looking for day care for their child with special needs. She suggests parents ask if the provider has some sort of training, experience or knowledge in handling the child’s needs. Special training is available, though not required, for day care providers who want to work with children with special needs through NeighborImpact. Wilson strongly encourages parents to look for providers with training.

Rivas also suggests parents go through “what if” questions: What if the child hits someone? What if he runs out the door? What if she throws a chair?

She says it is important for parents to be up front about their child’s challenges. “Not telling them anything is not good for the kid and not good for the provider.”

And ultimately that is what all parents hope for — a good fit between family and provider.

Looking for child care?

NeighborImpact Child Care Resources offers information about child care in Deschutes, Crook and Jefferson counties. Parents can call and let a staff member know what they are looking for (hours, location, cost, age of child, etc.) and then the staffer will offer a list of child care locations that match those needs. Contact: 541-548-2380.

Parents of children with special needs may want to check out Inclusive Child Care Program, a statewide group that provides resources, information and some financial assistance. Contact: http://oregoninclusivecc.org.