HandoutI started Dee’s Tots, a 24-hour home-based daycare facility that provides childcare here in New Rochelle, a city in Westchester, New York. We started in the basement apartment when I was really young and built it up to a house. I’ve been providing childcare for over 40 years.When the pandemic started, everything was unpredictable. We were called “essential workers,” offered PPP, and still had to sacrifice our savings to keep our team together. Some of them have been with me here for decades. That was the first crack in the veneer. What’s the point of being essential if you’ll still get left behind? Before the pandemic, we had over 34 families, now we’re down to half. A lot of parents lost their jobs, so children stopped coming to daycare. We got new parents who came to us because they were deemed essential workers, too: nurses, grocery workers, waiters and servers, and more—people who still had to step out there in the face of this virus and go to work, so we stayed open for them. It was the scariest situation that I have ever dealt with in my life.Most of our clients are working families who depend on daycare vouchers and during the pandemic, there were additional child care subsidies. Many of them work multiple jobs to support their families. As of August 1st, the temporary provisions for childcare providers, parents, and essential workers expire—even though it will probably take a few years to recover. Parents are making hard decisions in order to keep their kids in childcare.Read more at The Daily Beast.
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