Parents get innovative with child care during pandemic

LACONIA — The majority of New Hampshire child care providers that closed early in the pandemic have now reopened and many have the ability to take care of more children than are coming through their doors.

Some youngsters are staying with parents who are unemployed or working from home. Some parents may be reluctant to have children leave their home and potentially be exposed to COVID-19.

Cooperative child care arrangements using family members and neighbors have also popped up.

A total of 591 child care centers are open and participating in a state program that provides assistance to ensure services remain open. Even under reduced-capacity COVID-19 guidelines, there are 773 vacant slots in these programs, most for early-childhood participants.

Another 200 centers are re-opening by Sept. 8, said Marti Ilg, deputy director of the Division of Economic and Housing Stability in the state Department of Health and Human Services.

Child care challenges

That doesn’t mean everything is rosy in the child care arena.

“I guess the bottom line is data shows that supply continues to outpace demand statewide; that said, the current public health crisis continues to present operational challenges for child care programs, so it is understandable that parents and other caregivers report they are not able to access care, or the same care they did before the pandemic,” Ilg said.

“In addition, access to quality care has always been a challenge depending on the type of care and for what age group.”

Neighborhood cooperatives

“Something that’s kind of interesting is that parents are developing within their own neighborhoods, child care cooperatives and asking employers for flexibility to work four-day weeks and pairing with other parents to trade off days of care,” Ilg said.

“Businesses are engaged in a way they weren’t before.

“People are doing amazing things. I talk to home providers who have built outdoor classrooms. They are working together to make it happen.”

The government is ready to help these parents.

“We're developing a one-stop training opportunity for neighborhood cooperatives, giving exposure to health and safety, curriculum and behavior management.”

This kind of cooperative child care could also have the advantage of saving parents thousands of dollars.

The 2018 New Hampshire Child Care Market Rate Report found that the mean cost for an infant to attend a licensed child care center in New Hampshire was $237 per week. Over the course of a year, that would cost more than $12,000.

Neighbor helping neighbor

Melissa Hatfield said she and her husband decided not to send their two boys – one a second-grader and the other a fourth-grader – to their usual summer programs this year.

“The scariness of COVID was part of the reason,” she said. “Also, we have more flexibility than some other members of the community and wanted to save space for health care workers, people working at grocery stores and other essential workers.”

Hatfield, the bureau chief for the state Bureau of Housing Supports, often works from home these days, but was in her nearly empty office building on Pleasant Street in Concord on Tuesday.

She said there are a couple other families in her neighborhood with child care needs, so they got together this summer to help each other out. Hatfield takes Mondays off to watch the kids. Other parents help out on other days.

“It’s nothing formal, no written agreements, no payments, just three families in a neighborhood,” she said. “So far, it’s really been working well. We’re lucky, some of the people on the street are teachers and are around. Also, I think a lot more folks have more flexibility at work than ever before.”

Available slots

Tracy Pond is program manager of Child Care Aware of New Hampshire, which provides referrals for family seeking child care. It allows people to search for child care on its website. 

Before the pandemic, the organization had 985 child-care programs in its database. It now has 1,044 programs, which has been expanded to include day camps.

The state offered a variety of assistance to child care providers during the pandemic.

Assistance provided

When the stay-at-home order was in force, essential employees needed child care. When the order was lifted, child care was needed to allow the economy to flex open.

The state used federal emergency funds to pay a heightened differential for child care workers early in the pandemic.

It has also provided $14.9 million to 596 child care programs, ranging from $2,000 for some small programs to almost $100,000 for large ones.

Childhood development

“We know how important it is for children to develop safely and optimally and how necessary it is for parents to go to work and go to school and for businesses to have dependable and productive employees,” Ilg said.

The New Hampshire Community Loan Fund provides capital and technical assistance for a variety of organizations, including child care operations.

Julie McConnell, who directed the fund’s child care work for more than 20 years, said the state’s child care operators are facing significant issues.

“I’d be cautious in saying the system is robust, even though significant numbers have come back online,” she said. “If they can't fully enroll for the places they have available, they will face ongoing financial challenges.”

Many European countries have taken a different approach to early childhood education than the U.S.

“They see it as a public good and provide subsidies and investments,” she said. “Here it’s treated as a private responsibility rather than as a public good, and we would argue that it should be treated as a public good.”