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Backup child care keeps employees at work
by
Paula C. Squires
Virginia Business
February
2005
It
happens to every working parent: The best-laid plans
for child care fall through. Babysitters become ill,
grandparents are called for jury duty — the list
goes one. In Richmond, help in the form of corporate-sponsored,
backup child care may be on the way.
ChildrenFirst,
a Boston-based company that already provides this service
for businesses around Tysons Corner, wants to build
a second Virginia center in Richmond.
Richmond-based law firm Hunton & Williams has agreed
to support the project, and the company is trying to
line up other clients, says ChildrenFirst CEO John Marvin.
“We’re talking with a lot of the major employers
in Richmond. Our goal is to be there sometime in 2005,
but it depends on getting more clients committed, because
we have to go and spend $1 million to build the center.”
While the company builds corporate onsite centers in
some cities, it’s considering a consortium center
for Richmond. It would be centrally located and available
to employees of several clients. Child care would be
provided to companies that pay membership fees. A one-year
fee can range from hundreds of thousands of dollars
for a large company to $25,000 for a small client, Marvin
says.
Currently, the 12-year-old company has 33 centers and
about 260 clients, including such companies as Sony,
Warner Brothers and Deloitte & Touche. Businesses
sign on, Marvin says, because “they realize they
have a problem when an employee can’t get to work
because of care.” Typically, he adds, a working
family will have five to 10 breakdowns in child care
arrangements a year. “Companies realize there
will be a productivity payoff for them. Plus, it goes
deeper than that. It helps connect people to their firm,
and it can be used for employee recruiting and retention.”
ChildrenFirst has had a center at Tysons Center since
2002. Clients there include Freddie Mac, Ernst and Young
and several law firms. “We’re still optimistic
about coming to Richmond,” Marvin says.
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