Mission Family: Families celebrate 20 years of top-notch child care - Navy Community, Navy Spouse and Family Resources - Navy Times

Mission Family: Families celebrate 20 years of top-notch child care

Few understand better than Harriett Holley how far military child care has come.

“I know why all these rules are there. ... I remember being in the ghetto of child care,” Holley said at a recent Defense Department child care conference celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Military Child Care Act of 1989.

That law put new requirements into place for health and safety, training, inspection, developmental programs and the ratio of children to providers, among other things.

Holley’s first experience with military child care was in 1963. She had a pre-med degree and had not considered child care as a career path.

But in Schweinfurt, Germany, that career path found the young Army wife. As manager of a nursery in the basement of an apartment building, Holley took in any number of children who were dropped off in her care — infants, toddlers, you name it.

That was the way child care was done in those days in the military community. Babies pretty much stayed in cribs, and other children were corralled in pens — necessary because of the lack of resources and staff.

“Thank God I didn’t lose a child,” she said. “I came close.”

One day when a mother and father came to pick up their baby, they discovered that their child had vomited while sleeping. “I didn’t hear the baby,” Holley said, eyes welling with tears 46 years later as she recalled it.

“I knew then that I didn’t know what I was doing,” Holley said. “I was lost, knowing how close I came to losing a child.”

But she didn’t run. She went back to school, taking courses wherever she could. Initially, courses were limited. “Most of what I’ve learned, I’ve learned because of Army training and experience,” said Holley, who has worked in Army child and youth services since then, through her husband’s 30-year career and beyond.

She’s retired now, but her expertise is still called upon as needed. For example, she may be called to fill in for a director of an Army child development center who is on maternity leave. Most recently she filled in at the child care center at Fort Myer, Va. “They were short-staffed. Sometimes it’s just an extra pair of hands. I rocked many a baby,” she said.

Military child care’s journey from those basements, attics and converted stables has not been an easy one, and defense and service officials are still struggling to increase the availability of child care to service members. But it has been widely recognized as a model for the nation that is helping improve child care in the civilian community.

Holley uses her experiences to bring home the importance of the military child care system’s stringent training, health and safety inspections, developmental learning programs and other requirements.

But training isn’t just about changing diapers and feeding. “I appreciate where we’ve come, because we’re addressing real experiences and real issues,” she said, after a session on how child care providers can support military kids and their families in wartime.

“The military is so on-target to give us training in these issues,” she said. “It’s critical to the well-being of children.”

Karen Jowers is the wife of a military retiree. E-mail her at kjowers@militarytimes.com.