How Should Family Child Care Providers Respond to the Coronavirus?

Every day Coronavirus leads the news and is on everyone’smind. Nobody knows exactly how the virus will spread and whether it will effectus.

How should family child care providers respond to this threat?

What should you do if a parent doesn’t want to bring theirchildren to your program because of they are afraid their child will become infected?What should you do if you must shut down your program for two weeks because ofa voluntary or involuntary quarantine?

Get accurate information

It’s important to get accurate information about the spread of the virus. Your main source of information should be the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

They have specific guidance for child care programs.

Your child care licensor or state health departments mayalso be releasing information that may be helpful.

Coping with losing clients or being quarantined

Let’s say a parent stops bringing a child to your programeither because she is afraid her child will become infected by attending yourprogram, or her family is being quarantined.

Or, what if you are quarantined for two weeks, eithervoluntarily or involuntarily?

How can you respond?

This can be a stressful time. You don’t want to lose income, but you want to keep the children in your care, as well as your family safe. This is a good time to review your contract and policies. If your contract allows parents to take either paid or unpaid sick days, you may or may not want to allow parents to take sick days when their child is not actually sick.

In the same way you may or may not want to take your own sick days if you are quarantined. Since it is unlikely that your contract or policies directly addresses the coronavirus, you can either interpret your contract in a way that seems reasonable to you, or you can change your contract and policies.

If the parent has paid you one week in advance, you couldeither keep the money, refund the money or apply it to the days when the childreturns to your care. If the parent has paid you two weeks in advance you couldkeep half or all of the money or apply half or all of it when the child returnsto care.

Other than following specific language in your contract, youare free to set whatever rules you want to address these new circumstances. Ifnecessary, you can make changes in your contract now to address this. To do so,write down a new sick policy or a new coronavirus policy. Get the parents tosign it, you sign it and give the parents a copy.

Following these general guidelines will help:

• Ask parents to alert you if their child shows symptoms of an illness at home.
• Ask parents not to bring their child to your program if any of their household members are experiencing fever, dry cough, shortness of breath or signs of respiratory illness
• Ask parents to wash their children’s hands before coming to your program
• Ask parents who are feeling sick or unwell not to enter your home, but to drop off their child at your front door after notifying you

No one know exactly how the coronavirus will play out. It’s highly unlikely that the children in your care or their families or your family will contract this illness or that the consequences will be severe. It’s always best to plan ahead and consider what you will do if will be impacted by a quarantine. Obviously, you want to follow recommended health practices. I also recommend you review and revise your contract and policies as necessary.

Thanks to Leisha Harrleson of Gingerbread Play House for help with this article.

Tom Copeland - www.tomcopelandblog.com

Image credit: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/1608796