COVID-19 restrictions are now being lifted in most areas, and businesses are starting to reopen, allowing many people to get back to work.
To make this happen, there is one piece of the puzzle that has not been fully sorted: childcare. With facilities and summer camps operating at half capacity in most places, and fuzzy guidelines around babysitters and childcare, parents are struggling.
Taylor Boylan, from Berwick, N.S., is a mother of three children under 12 years old. For the past 11 weeks, she has worked full-time hours from home, while homeschooling and looking after her children.
“This has meant long nights, early mornings and sometimes, sitting on my back deck, on a conference call – helping with school worksheets and watching my other child play on the swing set,” she says.
As the economy opens, without childcare available to many people, Boylan has to continue this workload at home even as her co-workers return to the office.
With limited childcare facilities to begin with - and those that exist operating at diminished capacity - there just isn’t space available for Boylan’s children. The programs her children would attend any other summer are not able to run this year, as they are not equipped to deal with the COVID-19 precautions.
She says the next logical option would be to look for a childcare provider in her home, but this would end up costing more than summer camps and would be virtually her entire paycheck.
Lindsay Ballantyne, from Centreville, N.S., is in a similar situation. As an essential worker at a hospital, the single mother had to take a leave of absence from her job to care for her daughter. She says no childcare was offered, and she could find no resources.
“No one wanted to put themselves or their own families in potential danger by looking after her,” says Ballantyne. “Childcare or no childcare, if we were working, we wouldn’t be able to have worked and be parents. A lot were forced to choose our jobs over our children.”
‘We have lost our income, too’
Childcare facilities are opening June 15 in Nova Scotia, but Sher Boudreau-Misner, who operates an in-home daycare in Kentville, N.S., says there has been a lot backlash, with many complaining it is too soon and could put children at risk.
Daycare workers, Boudreau-Misner says, have gone through almost a whole season without the children they care about deeply and will do everything they can to protect them.
“Daycare providers need to reopen because we have lost our income, too. We also have gone from having prosperous businesses to having nothing overnight. We, too, have to work extremely hard for the rest of the year to get back what we had before COVID-19,” she says.
For a lot of the families needing childcare, staying at home is no longer an option. Having other family members look after the kids is not an option, either.
“We can't just wipe the childcare profession away because we are needed now even more so than society ever thought before,” says Boudreau-Misner.
With limited spaces available, or school-aged children being too old for them, yet too young to be left alone, parents like Randy Lynn Newman in Hants Border, N.S. are thinking of hiring a high school student for the summer. Newman says her family follows the public health recommendations but is unclear if that is permissible.
“The government and public health need to provide some guidance on this issue. You can’t open an economy without access to childcare,” says Newman.
A response from the Nova Scotia government isn’t much clearer – when a parent sent a question via Facebook, the province said it encourages anyone who is providing care for children, including other family members and friends, to follow all public health advice to protect themselves, protect children in their care, and to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
Wendy Lapierre, who helps manage Cotton Tale Café + Play in New Minas, N.S., says she’s been on the hunt for information about the possibility of reopening, but says all along, people confessed that they didn’t know the answers.
“No one knew any answers and we are all trying our best to figure out what to do,” says Lapierre.
This is unchartered territory for everyone. That Fun Place in Charlottetown, P.E.I., is in a similar boat, saying reopening plans for the play café is still a work in progress. Co-owner Gillian Webster says they have suspended most activities. The only exception, like Cotton Tale, is for group bookings until they can figure out how to navigate their business under the new regulations and guidelines.
“We believe it our responsibility to take our time and make certain that we have done everything we can to ensure the safety of our staff and customers so we are going to take as much time as is necessary to try and get this right,” she says.
Day camps difficult
With limited childcare spaces and uncertainty about babysitters, the next option is summer day camps, especially for older youth.
Jennifer Hiscock of Get Messy NL in Paradise, N.L., says summer camps of the old are now a thing of the past. Now, they are only able to accept 10 children with three staff to ensure proper cleaning and social distancing are monitored. Children are subdivided into two groups of five with social distancing between them. All children need to have their own materials without sharing: no communal games, Legos, or blocks. All individual items only and what they can use, clearly marked, she says.
As for recreation camps, the Town of Conception Bay South, N.L., says it is continuing to monitor the situation and follow the government guidelines on safety measures and decisions. The town is currently in the process of interviewing camp staff should the program proceed, says Mayor Terry French. If it proceeds, camps will have a reduction in activities, as well as reduced capacity and logistical changes in accordance with COVID-19 guidelines, he says.
Other places are considering offering virtual camps for kids. But, many parents, like Taryn Stevenson, from Kentville, N.S., are not interested in virtual camps, especially after the last few months of virtual schooling.
“There are enough resources online for activities and I don’t want to pay for it. Besides, nothing compares to being with other kids outside or doing an activity together inside. That, I will pay for,” she says.
Some groups of parents are getting creative and creating their own socially distanced neighbourhood camps, with each parent taking a day to plan fun, educational activities, for groups less than 10, staying six feet apart.
In the end, if parents are unable to find childcare, Hiscock suggests getting outside as much as possible and enjoy the summer we have. Walk the trails, take advantage of all the wonderful things your province has to offer.
“This is a trying time, so please don’t be afraid to ask for help and to realize that everyone is doing the best they can under these circumstances. It’s OK to not feel OK, we are all in this together and we will all come out on top,” she says.
