How might we follow up with those who completed the UNC Health childcare needs survey?
Updated: Mar 26, 2020
HMW: How might we follow up with folks who have completed the UNC Health survey on childcare needs?
What we learned:
The childcare needs survey was sent out to employees of UNC Rex Hospital, UNC Medical Center (Chapel Hill and Hillsborough hospitals), and the UNC School of Medicine.
Close to 300 UNC Health and UNC School of Medicine employees have filled out the childcare needs survey thus far.
Of those who have responded, only 16% of employees indicate that they have secured childcare through May 15th (the rest indicated they may have childcare or have not yet figured out plans for childcare).
Of those who responded, only 22% of employees indicated that they are very likely to find childcare on their own (vs. 54% who said somewhat likely and 23% who said not likely).
Wake County, Durham County, and Orange County have announced shelter-in-place orders for residents starting at the end of this week.
UNC Health HR is changing their staffing model to identify specific HR personnel who can be contacted by employees to answer questions about emergency childcare.
We now have concrete, updated emergency childcare solutions for parents posted on our ‘Finding Childcare’ page on our website. This includes:
- NC DHHS’s hotline: 1-888-600-1685 (8am-5pm, Mon-Fri)
- YMCA of the Triangle programs for children of essential employees
- UNC Med Student group that is self-organizing volunteer daycare services.
Insights:
Close to 80% of the UNC Health employees who have completed the childcare needs survey prefer in-home childcare solutions to out-of-home childcare solutions so any follow-up communication in the survey needs to provide resources to find in-home childcare and how to make it safer. We can’t just refer folks to state level resources for out-of-home solutions.
In finalizing our suggestions for parents and childcare providers looking for new in-home childcare amidst COVID-19 and sending it out for feedback, we realized that these suggestions also apply to parents and childcare providers engaged in ongoing in-home childcare.
- For example, a family who has a long-term nanny would still benefit from reading our safety suggestions, especially about daily screening, hygiene tips, and backup plans for childcare if someone (child, parent, for nanny) starts to show symptoms of COVID-19.
- We’re now sharing our suggestions for “in-home childcare” and not just emergency, short-term, or informal childcare.
A significant number of UNC Health employees are native Spanish speakers so we need to create a Spanish version of our survey to assess childcare needs.
We now have concrete childcare solutions in our community. We can now work with UNC Health & community donors to create systems to provide financial support.
Questions generated:
Among UNC Health employees who indicate in the survey that they are able to find childcare for their children through May 15th, how are they doing this?
Who is going to pay for childcare for these UNC Health employees?
How do we set-up equitable systems to identify those employees in need of financial assistance?