By Cecilia Nasmith/Today’s Northumberland
In addition to putting together give-aways and fielding volunteers at COVID-19 immunization clinics for children, Northumberland County Early Years Manager Lesley Patterson said the Early Years community has had an active and meaningful pandemic response.
Patterson listed some of the ways these people have contributed to helping things run more smoothly at the February meeting of county council’s Social Services Standing Committee.
Most recently, they were vital to keeping the community running when Ontario schools’ Christmas break was extended through Jan. 17 and emergency workers needed child care for their school-age children.
These workers would have had child care in place for their infants and toddlers, Patterson explained, but adding school-aged children would have been insupportable for these resources.
The Ministry of Education approved funding to allow this service for front-line workers and, in Northumberland, three operators at six sites in Brighton, Colborne and Cobourg came through.
“In the first 48 hours, we got over 200 applications,” Patterson recalled.
In the end, they would receive 244 applications for help with 360 children.
Now that schools are back, Patterson said they are supporting parents with absences. What that means is that, when a school child has to stay home because of COVID or isolation protocols, they help pay for that child’s care.
“We know we want children to stay home if they are sick, and we know it’s a hardship for families.
“We are also supporting with staff vacancies,” she added.
If a child-care worker needs to miss work for the same reason, they pay that worker to do the right thing and stay home from work so the child-care facility need only pay for the replacement worker. In this way, she said, they can ensure sick leave for these vital workers in the event they did not have that benefit.
Like any place of work, county day-care facilities have had staffing shortages due to Omicron and having to isolate because of Omicron. In fact, Patterson said, one child-care centre closed last week for this reason.
There has been a move to augment Early Childhood Educators with Early On staffers, she said, “because that is our main concern right now – to stay open and keep parents going to work.
“We were excited and happy we were able, as an Early On, to be able to support our licensed child care.”
At the time of the meeting, she said, all the child-care facilities are open. And Early On staff are operating their programs virtually.
“But next week, they will be going to in-person outdoor activities – working toward going back inside,” Patterson added.
