Child Care Crisis

Child care in Rabun County is in a crisis. While Rabun County has some day cares operating, there are few decent day cares available to watch children under the age of 18 months and even fewer day cares I would trust with my child. And with a county commissioner one time telling me he didn't think Rabun County necessarily needed to be family friendly, I wonder if we'll ever have decent, good quality day care for those one parent families or those families where both the mom and dad work.

Much has been said recently in the Clayton Tribune concerning DFACS in Rabun County and the taking of children from homes. And I know of an instance where DFACS has closed a day care in Rabun County. But investigating and closing day cares, while they need to be closed if they aren't doing their job, isn't taking care of all the problems. Closing a day care, when it needs to be done, is making sure children are safe. But what else needs to be done is we need to be working toward top quality day care for the working families and single parent families in Rabun County. And the child care needs to be affordable.

With all the talk recently about the EDA and CVB and having to work to build our economic base by bringing in industry and increasing our amount of tourism in Rabun County can't be done with out several things in place. One of those things is quality child care. Someone isn't going to move to a community to take a job at that new factory or in the resort industry if there isn't quality child care. This is a problem.

While there are plenty of issues our local government leaders need to focus on, quality child care has fallen through the cracks. And our children are much too important to let this happen.

AJ