Child care at all hours

https://www.facebook.com/CareThatWorksMA/videos/695073764697199/

 

On streets across America, every night at around 6 p.m., child care programs shut their doors for the day — shutting out working parents who need late-night or early-morning child care programs.

It’s a problem that has grown more vivid as the COVID-19 pandemic reveals the fragility of the country’s child care systems. 

“In a resource-starved child care system, very few licensed child care providers can serve the child care needs of parents with schedules outside the old, standard, 9-to-5 business day,” Sandra Teixeira of the nonprofit organization New England United for Justice says in a new video.

The result, Teixeira says, parents get shut out of nighttime, weekend, and other off-hour jobs. 

That’s why a group of nonprofit organizations and labor unions convened by Community Labor United have launched a new initiative called Care that Works to transform child care delivery in Massachusetts.

The first step:

The “union-backed coalition, with help from the city of Boston, is launching a pilot program to provide childcare in the early morning, for workers in industries like construction that do not have standard work hours,” CommonWealth magazine reports.

“Boston Mayor Marty Walsh and Care That Works announced the program at a virtual press conference.” Boston is contributing $25,000 to the effort.

“Care That Works will provide stipends to the providers to make the schedule adjustment, and families will pay the standard rate that the provider charges – which ranges from $290 to $400 a week for full-time care.”

It’s a strategy that should help families and the economy.

“This Program will be critical in ensuring that residents can get back to work or pursue good jobs with the support they need when it comes to child care,” Lindsay McCluskey, the deputy director of Community Labor United, says in a Backyard News article. “We hope that the Pilot can model our vision of what the child care system should look like: one that truly supports working class families and child care providers.”

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh adds, “Now is the time to create a better, more equitable and a just society… Now is the time to show that child care is a public good and that it is our collective responsibility…we are going to keep fighting to support women, working families and child care providers because child care is essential for healthy, equitable communities.” 

Off-hours child care isn’t a new idea. In 2018, Square One in Springfield, Mass., launched “Square One: Next Level,” recruiting family child care providers and training them to offer families round-the-clock child care that can accommodate children’s dinner and bedtime needs. The effort received financial support from local organizations and businesses and from local businessman and philanthropist Lyman Wood.

 

 

Among those who will benefit from round-the-clock child care is Boston resident and union carpenter Christina Morris. She tells CommonWealth Magazine that she has relied on her children’s grandmother to provide early morning care. But whenever their grandmother isn’t available – because she cares for her own mother or has her own medical appointments — Morris or her partner must take time off from work, potentially jeopardizing their jobs. Having reliable early morning child care will relieve this pressure.

Single father Matthew Hamilton, a construction apprentice, sums up many parents’ feelings of relief, telling CommonWealth that the new program will enable him to be a dad and have a career. That, he says, is “priceless.”