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Province to reopen child care facilities in reduced capacity

The Brandon Sun - 4/4/2020

After ordering child care facilities to close last month as a preventive measure against the spread of the COVID-19 virus, the Manitoba government is calling for them to reopen in a reduced capacity.

Families Minister Heather Stefanson said during a media conference on Thursday afternoon that the province is looking for the centres to reopen to provide care for children of health-care providers and emergency services workers.

“There are still health-care and other emergency services workers who need child care and today I want to call on child care providers throughout our province to help those workers as they provide needed services during this pandemic,” Stefanson said.

Licensed centres that reopen will be limited to a maximum of 16 spaces with that limit carrying forward in alignment with the closure of in-person classes for kindergarten through Grade 12 students.

To assess the need of workers for these spaces, the province is asking health-care providers and emergency services workers needing child care to register online at forms.gov.mb.ca/GoMCovid19ESW/ by April 8.

On April 14, all parents who work in critical services as determined by the provincial chief public health officer will be able to apply for child care spaces in licensed facilities.

Child care centres willing to reopen or that have spaces available are being asked to contact the province by emailing cdcinfo@gov.mb.ca.

The province also announced that the provincial operating grant for daycares will continue to be distributed as normal, even for daycares that choose to remain closed. Child care centres are being asked by the province to refund parents their fees if services are not currently being provided and not to charge parents to hold spots if they are not currently being used.

A release put out by the province states that 1,200 children of health-care providers and emergency services workers had been matched with available child care spaces.

After the announcement, the Sun spoke with Erika Lesage, chair of the board of directors for Brandon-based daycare Children’s Den Inc. 

She said that the facility, which had to lay off most of its staff after last month’s closure order, is in the process of getting up and running again. Calls are being made by the daycare to its client families that have parents working in the applicable fields.

While the government is still providing grant money to daycares, that only makes up 45 per cent of Children’s Den’s revenue. On top of that, the 16 spaces they’re allowed to open back up represents only half of the total capacity.

That means that the centre is going to have to operate with lower than normal income. Because of that, the facility won’t be able to afford to bring back all the staff they had to lay off.

“There’s also some uncertainties because not everybody wants to put themselves at risk by working right now,” Lesage said. “It is going to depend on if we have the staff to reopen or not, which may be a challenge. There are people working in child care that are immunocompromised or members of their families are immunocompromised.”

Another challenge Lesage brought up is that child care workers who don’t have child care for their children won’t be able to return to work right now even if they wanted to.

Lesage also worries about suddenly not having enough staff to run the facility if they resume operations and then one or more employees become ill and unable to work.

Children’s Den Inc. will work toward reopening, but Lesage is looking for more support from the province.

“We are trying to make it all work with the information we have been given and with what little funding we have to work with,” she said. “We are a sector that has always stepped up. A sector of underpaid, overworked and under-recognized field of works primarily made up of women who have subsidized the system to keep it running. It is the government who needs to step up so we can make it happen and do our part.”

» cslark@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @ColinSlark