With social distancing unlikely among babies and toddlers, parents of young children across the country are debating the health and safety risks inherent in child care centers, and weighing what few alternatives they have to balancing family and work.
In this Thursday, May 28, 2020 photo, Kerwin Robinson looks on as his wife, Emma Robinson, lifts their son Tristan, 2, while being photographed at their home in Shoreline, Wash. Emma, a pharmacist at a Seattle hospital, and Kerwin, a software technology manager, decided to keep their son in daycare during the coronavirus outbreak. Emma Robinson figured the daycare was no more risky than her job as an essential health care worker.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also urging child care providers to have caretakers wear masks and other personal protective equipment, clean and sanitize all surfaces more vigilantly, and screen kids and teachers with temperature checks. For the latter, what’s most important is for parents to be informed about how their day care will adapt to new protocols, and to understand that the relative risk for children to become sick enough to require hospitalization or die are low to negligible.
Will Gee, 39, an attorney in D.C. who is currently unemployed, said he and his wife decided to send their 3-year-old daughter back to day care. The father was struggling to care for her and an older brother, and he needed time to look for a new job and trusted their child care center to be responsible with new protocols.
With enrollment capacity cut in half to minimize exposure, Ham-Campbell said she’s been on a mad hunt for plexiglass to help further divide her centers’ spaces. “A lot of people were stuck on ‘Should I go back?’ -- which is a question that seems like a question of yes or no, but it was hard for people to conceptualize because there’s an infinite number of things to think about,” Oster said.
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