Childcare continues to evolve during the era of COVID-19.
Like many sectors, physical distancing and protective measures like hand washing and increased outdoor activities have been put into place.
There is some concern the pandemic could have a harmful effect on a young child’s development.
In an interview with Vista Radio, Minister of State for Child Care, Katrina Chen is seeing those impacts on her six-year-old son.
“I have seen the social and emotional impacts on him, he’s the only child, he stays at home and most of the time it’s harder to go to parks we try to go out as much as we can but not being able to interact with other kids has had an impact on my own child.”
With kids going back to school Monday (June 1st) on a voluntary basis and parents heading back to work, child care centres across BC are bracing for an increase in numbers.
However, Chen stated the final say will be made by parents and the providers.
“Child care has been safely operating during this pandemic they have been serving a lot of essential services workers and now with more parents heading back to work I know more centres are considering opening up their spots.”
“We want them to make sure that they can safely operate because child care is very diverse here in BC as there are so many different ways of running a centre we smaller centres, home-based centres as well as larger ones.”
“The health of our child care educators is paramount, we need to protect them making sure kids wash their hands as soon as they come into the centre and how do we make sure parents don’t do drop-offs at the same time,” added Chen.
Some parents across the province are actually loaning spots temporarily for the children of essential workers.
We asked Chen if this is something the government is encouraging.
“During the past two months, any open centres have seen there spots to the kids of essential service workers who need the service because they are on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic but now of course, with most parents coming back to work, that they will need childcare so we’ve been working with centres to decide whether or not if they have the capacity to look after more children and I would encourage parents to talk to their provider about the individual situation at the centre and see how many spots are available and if they can accommodate all parents returning to work.”
So far, the BC Government recently invested 90-million dollars to support 26-hundred child care centres to remain open and another 14-hundred that have closed so they can re-open in the future.
Chen adds the province launched an online portal for essential and non-essential workers requesting temporary emergency child care.
Child care providers who receive temporary emergency funding will prioritize placements for children on the essential services workers list going from highest to lowest priority.
On Tuesday, the government also announced a 10-million dollar grant program over the next three years to assist survivors of sexual assault.
Chen believes the initiative can help children and parents who may be suffering from a toxic home environment.
“I think this is a huge step to help support frontline workers, parents, vulnerable women and children who are having a hard time and I think this announcement is very welcomed by the sector and I believe the funding will support many individuals.”