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?