July 19, 1984

WEST HARTFORD, Conn. Around 8 o'clock each weekday morning a handful of cars pull up in front of the neatly kept frame home here belonging to Susan and Paul DeLude. Toddlers and infants ranging from a few months to 4 years old are escorted inside. The children, who never number more than six, scamper into the den adjoining the gleaming white kitchen or run down to the blue and white playroom the DeLudes have built for them in the basement. If the weather is fine, they will go outdoors to play in the small backyard. Mrs. DeLude, trim, dark-haired and 38 years old, is one of a growing number of licensed home-based day-care operators who take care other people's children for a fee. Yet while she has won the admiration of the mothers whose infants she has helped raise over the last nine years, Mrs. DeLude, and others like her, are not necessarily highly regarded by their neighbors. Instead, hundreds of these home-based day-care facilities are the focus of a controversy that is dividing communities all over the country, according to officials at the National Advocacy Project on Family Day Care at the Children's Foundation, a nonprofit organization in Washington, financed in part by the Carnegie Foundation.

A change in Mexico's policy in Central America is sensed by Reagan Administration officials. They said they believed that Mexico was retreating from its strong support of the Sandinista Government in Nicaragua and the leftist insurgents in El Salvador. (Page A1, Columns 4-6.) The trial of four Solidarity advisers on charges of plotting to overthrow the Polish system was adjourned by a military court in Warsaw. The tribunal cited a pending decision in Parliament this weekend on a general amnesty for political prisoners. The defendants are Jacek Kuron, Adam Michnik, Zbigniew Romaszewski and Henryk Wujec. (A4:3.)

A report in the Executive Changes column of Business Day yesterday incorrectly described an appointment by Exovir Inc. Richard D. Glaser was named president and chief operating officer.

Walter F. Mondale won the 1984 Presidential nomination of the Democratic Party tonight, capping a grinding campaign that tested his stamina and exposed deep divisions within the ranks of his party. Delegates to the 39th Democratic National Convention nominated the former Vice President on the first ballot.

Bolstered by a surge in apartment and condominium construction, new housing was started at an annual rate of 1.9 million units in June, up from a 1.8 million rate in May, the Government reported today. The 5.3 percent rise in housing starts over all came despite a 7.2 percent drop in starts of new single-family homes to their lowest levels since December. The Commerce Department report confirmed predictions by private analysts that rising mortgage rates have dampened construction activity by making houses too expensive for many prospective buyers. It also indicated that high mortgage rates had driven many potential single-family home buyers into the rental market.