Nova Scotia daycares opened on Monday with reduced capacity under strict guidelines to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19 as well as criticism for the overall handling of child care.
Bonnie Minard, director of the Portland Daycare Centre in Dartmouth, said staff, children and families were happy to be back, but there was also sense of caution.
“Currently we're operating well under the 50 per cent, which is typical for many centres,” Minard said. “Unfortunately, just with the way things have gone with COVID, we're open at a very low ratio, right now.”
She said they opened with about 20 per cent capacity in their Evergreen Plaza facility that is normally licenced for 92 children.
“People were very excited,” Minard said. “There's a group of parents that are very cautious and they're waiting to see what happens with the reopening, so that's understandable, as well, because I think people got very afraid of COVID and the seriousness of the virus. So we've had people that are just waiting and see what happens after we're open for a couple of weeks, because there's lots of talk ... about the second wave coming.”
Minard said a lot of work has gone into following public health protocols, preparing for reopening and dealing with the stress of trying to run a small business in these unprecedented times.
“So it's nice to see that we now have families in and I'm hoping as we're open, more people will see that it's OK to be open and start returning to some sense of normalcy.”
She said staff have increased cleaning measures by probably three-fold over the already-stringent standard they applied before closing, as well as extra distancing measures and individual bags of toys.
Jane Williamson, executive director of Le Petit Voilier French language child centres, also was happy with the opening at their seven locations across HRM.
“Most of (the children) were super excited to get here,” she said. “The routine was a little bit changed but we had told the parents how it was going to go in the morning.”
She said the Dartmouth location opened outside the building. They, too, saw capacities well below the 50 per cent margin, though, because their licence refers to a total that would also include school-aged children during the school year.
Williamson praised her staff for their hard work in preparing and practising for the opening.
“I'm super happy and proud of them because it went super smoothly this morning.”
The provincial NDP is not impressed with the state of child care in Nova Scotia, however.
Party Leader Gary Burrill called the current system a “piecemeal, Band-Aid, hodgepodge of child care.
“I think at a very fundamental level, this government doesn't get it, about the necessity of a comprehensive plan for child care in order for people to be able to return to do in-person work,” Burrill said on Monday.
“This 'opening' ... today of child care doesn't provide anything for all the school-aged children in the province that require child care. It doesn't help us with the many, many children whose parents were planning on them going to camps in July and August, but the camps are not going to be functioning this year as they in other years would have because they're not going to be able to meet the guidelines, and so have cancelled, as many of them have. And, of course, it also doesn't cover the 50 per cent of the capacity of the licensed child care centres that are not opened today – they are only opening today at a half operating level.”
Burrill said he thinks Premier Stephen McNeil and his government regard child care as something that just looks after itself, when the reality is it's a challenge for people to return to work and still be able to look after their kids.
“And the unemployment numbers for Nova Scotia last month showed this with striking clarity,” he said, citing statistics that show the unemployment rate for women spiked from 10.8 in April to 16.4 in May.
“One of the primary reasons for this is that women are staying home in order to look after their kids. So, it doesn't look after itself,” Burrill said.
“This is a moment when thousands of families across the province are in a white-knuckle panic trying to figure out how in the world they're going to be able to get to their jobs where their employers are calling them back, and how they're going to get their kids looked after. It is a moment when we're able to see crystal clearly that what we have to have for our economy and our society to work in our province is a system of universal, affordable, quality child care across the board.”
