“There were hundreds of applications within a matter of hours,” said Jodi Maertens, Youth and Family Officer with the Southwest Initiative Foundation. “It was crazy.”
The independent community foundation was in charge of handling the applications in the 18 southwest Minnesota counties that it serves. The flexible funds for providers could be used for a range of needs, from buying extra cleaning supplies to supplementing lost income because out-of-work parents pulled their kids out of day care.
The response to the grants showed there was a serious need, said Maertens.
The one-time grants ranged from $800 to 2,000.
The $800 in grant money they received helped cover additional expenses and lost revenue, said Nancy Stredde, who operates a home-based day care in Willmar with her sister, Paula Stredde.
Their business, First Step Family Daycare, lost a couple kids who are home with their parents but they now have two school-aged children — who had previously been there only after school — all day.
Nancy Stredde said their day care serves families of essential workers, with nearly all currently working in senior living facilities. All the kids have been at First Step since they were infants. “They’re a family,” she said.
Stredde said they have implemented more stringent cleaning routines to sanitize surfaces before kids arrive and after each parent leaves. She said the children have become good at policing each other about washing hands and are quick to put toys that babies have chewed on into a tub for washing.
Along with added duties of helping the school kids with their distance-learning projects while tending to the younger children, Stredde said their new daily routine includes plowing through numerous emails detailing updated health guidelines or new financial assistance programs for which they may be eligible.
Sue Thomes, who coordinates Child Care Aware of Minnesota services to providers in this region through the United Community Action Partnership, said day care providers have been inundated with an overwhelming amount of information about COVID-19, which can add to the stress as they struggle to stay in business.
In her role, Thomes serves as a resource for the nearly 40 day care centers and 270 home-based day care providers in the four-county area of Kandiyohi, Renville, Meeker and McLeod counties.
She said it was tough for providers to make a living before the pandemic and she’s worried about the long-term impact the pandemic will have on providers — and the people who need child care services.
Thomes said some home-based providers are closing because they don’t have enough kids anymore and those that are still open worry about their own health and wonder how long the pandemic will continue and how long their business can be sustained.
Child care centers are also struggling to pay staff when there are fewer kids attending.
“It’s a big financial hardship the longer it goes on,” said Thomes.
A new $30 million Peacetime Emergency Child Care Grant offered in Minnesota will provide funds to licensed providers who serve essential workers. The first round of applications ended in mid-April and the second round begins in May.
Thomes said $30 million “sounds like a lot of money,” but considering that more than half of the state’s providers applied for the grants, it isn’t. “There’s not enough money to go around,” she said.
Thomes said home-based day care providers who have closed because of COVID-19 may be eligible for unemployment that they normally would not have been and day care centers may be eligible for Paycheck Protection Program loans. Emergency grants and economic injury loans could also be available.
Debi Brandt, director of United Community Action Partnership — a private nonprofit agency which administers a variety of community support programs that assist with such things as child care, housing and transportation — said she believes the federal stimulus bill will also include money to help child care in Minnesota.
It’s not known yet if that money will help school districts pay for child care. The state mandated that schools provide free day care to essential workers.
Melissa Akerson, coordinator of the Cardinal Place, which operates day care programs in three Willmar elementary school buildings, said she hopes they will eventually be reimbursed for the free services. But she said their main concern right now is taking care of the kids and helping families who are working at essential jobs.
Before COVID-19, the Cardinal Place program had 65-80 kids at each location. Akerson said those children are now home with their parents — who are non-essential workers — and the day care program has 15 to 25 new children — whose parents are essential workers — at each location.
It’s a new routine for the children, including many who don’t know each other and some that come from communities outside the Willmar School District, said Akerson.
“But it’s going great. The kids are happy,” she said.
Akerson said staff are adapting to the “new normal” of extra cleaning and helping the students with their school work, and she’s already making plans for activities in case the pandemic continues into the summer.
Thomes said if there’s one lesson she hopes communities, business leaders and lawmakers learn because of the coronavirus, it’s that day care providers are “crucial to the economy and crucial to all employers” and they need support all the time — not just during a world-wide pandemic.
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COVID-19 challenges day care providers - West Central Tribune
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