How might we provide guidance to parents and childcare providers on short-term, informal childcare?

HMW: How might we provide guidance to parents and childcare providers on short-term, informal childcare solutions?

What we’ve learned:

• Our Task Force members have been fielding asks about connecting healthcare workers with immediate, informal childcare options as we continue to work on more formal solutions at larger scale. 

• UNC Health Care will work with us to administer a survey ASAP to assess immediate and longer-term childcare needs.

• Henderson County and Onslow County are working to provide emergency care for school-aged children for their healthcare workers.

• Governor Roy Cooper enacted Executive Order No. 120 ordering that public schools remain closed through May 15, 2020 among other closures. 

Insights:

• It is stressful for healthcare workers to consider these different childcare options for children 0 to 17 amidst an already very stressful time at work. 

• Different parents will choose different childcare solutions for their children - and that is okay.

• We need to provide ways to minimize risk for folks using shorter-term, informal childcare options ASAP. Folks are already using these informal options and want to know how to minimize risks with the solutions they’ve opted into.  

• We need to consider minimizing risk for not only children providers for these informal childcare options; many resources are currently for the safety of children.

Questions generated:

• Now that schools have been ordered by the governor to remain closed through May 15, 2020, how much greater is the need for emergency childcare for children 0 to 17 among healthcare workers?

• What questions do healthcare worker parents have about the different informal childcare options? i.e. What questions can we help answer?

• How are Duke and WakeMed progressing on emergency childcare plans for their healthcare workers?