Shortage of childcare leads some to take matters into their own hands

By Bryan Gentry
Lynchburg News & Advance
Published: April 7, 2008

The first Caterpillar Clubhouse family-owned day-care center opened in Rustburg barely over a year ago.

Since then, Shelly Hunt, along with her sister-in-law and mother, have opened three more centers in the Lynchburg area, serving more than 300 children.

Motivated by their faith and lots of phone calls from parents, they’re helping fill gaps in childcare services, especially by keeping infants and elementary school-aged children.

Already they’re thinking about expanding again. Hunt said parents from other areas like Bedford County and Appomattox have called saying they need child-care help there.

Rhonda Tyree, co-director of the Child Care Resource Center at the Alliance for Families and Children, said the Lynchburg region has a shortage of childcare, especially outside the city.

Meanwhile, the demand is high. The agency helped with nearly 400 child-care referrals in 2007, Tyree said.

“Outlying areas in Bedford County have very few options for child care,” Tyree said. “In some areas, like Amherst, they have several providers but most of them are preschool age.”

Only 93 of the 225 day-care centers in the area provide infant care, Tyree said. Half of those are in-home centers that can only accept a few children.

The high demand for quality care is nothing new to Hunt.

She and her mother Elsie Tomlin ran the Bashful Giraffe day-care center at the Lynchburg Seventh Day Adventist Church on George Street for 14 years.

Though they expanded that service over the years, they reached their capacity and still got calls from parents who needed child care.

Hunt said she prayed over several months of 2006 about what to do. She decided to leave Bashful Giraffe and open more Christian-based centers.

“I felt like God was telling me, don’t just stay in one place. Take this out so other people can experience it,” she said.

Not long after that, situations started to make way for their new business. The vacant Old Dominion Box Company building off Virginia 130 in Madison Heights came up for sale.

Tomlin had prayed for years, Hunt said, for the chance to turn that building into a day-care center to serve Amherst County. But it wasn’t for sale.

Since it became available just a few weeks after they chose to leave Bashful Giraffe, they took it as confirmation that they should go out on their own.

“The land was very valuable and the building (didn’t cost) very much,” Tomlin said. “With a lot of work we turned it into a child-care facility.”

Members of Mountain View Christian Fellowship helped refurbish the 50-year-old building.

Meanwhile, Hunt and Tomlin opened the first Caterpillar Clubhouse in Rustburg United Methodist Church in March 2007.

In June they opened another one in Crosspoint Wesleyan Church on Timberlake Road. Hunt’s sister, Tammy Tomlin, took the lead there.

That summer, Hunt learned that the YMCA was closing its before-and-after-school day-care service at Gladys Elementary School. She didn’t want parents there to lose the service, so they opened a Caterpillar Clubhouse there in August.

That fall, the Old Dominion Box Company office was ready for business. The fourth Caterpillar Clubhouse opened there in November.

At the Madison Heights, Timberlake Road and Rustburg locations, they offer care for children ages one month to 12 years, for prices ranging from around $90 to $115 per week.

The before-and-after-school program costs $40 a week.

Each morning begins with worship, and with exercise along with songs about Bible stories.

Then they proceed to class time, and playtime outside.

Last Monday, Tammy Tomlin led a group of preschoolers at the Timberlake Road facility in a discussion about their weekend.

One boy said he rode a dirt bike, which led them into a talk about the importance of wearing helmets.

Then they went over the days of the week and colors in English and in Spanish.

Since clouds kept them inside, the children then scattered to different areas of the room to play with dolls, dinosaurs and cars.

Tomlin said they take a personal approach.

“It’s very family-oriented. It’s very service-oriented,” she said.

“It is a business, but our part of it goes beyond six to six.”

She said the day-care employees sometimes attend ball games or other events the children are involved in.

“You can’t go into child care to make money,” she said. “You will make money if you do a good job,” she said. “It’s about meeting needs.”

The Timberlake Road Caterpillar Clubhouse is full, Hunt said. They are looking for another location to move it to, so they can take more children.

They have a building that keeps popping back into their minds, Hunt said. That could be a sign. “We felt like God will let us know about the next location, and the next location,” Hunt said.

Back at the Bashful Giraffe, Denise Berti, the director who replaced Hunt, said things are going well.

“We’ve definitely increased our ministry, as well as our curriculum,” Berti said. “In each of our programs now, we have a teacher with a four-year degree in the field. … They do more science and nature and social studies programs.”

She said the Bashful Giraffe has about 96 children currently, with room for up to 120.

Shelly Hunt praises Christian Jones for good work as children learned about the letter ‘n’ at the Caterpillar Clubhouse.
Photo by: Jill Nance/The News & Advance