Gov’t announces child-care plan for health-care workers

The province is taking steps to help health-care workers and other employees who are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic when it comes to child care.

The Saskatchewan government announced Friday that it is going to repurpose child-care facilities in schools — which closed Friday — to offer child-care services to workers “who are delivering services related to the pandemic response.”

The change is to take effect Monday.

“We thank the child-care providers in schools for working with us during this extraordinary time to provide this essential service for our health-care and other pandemic response service employees,” Deputy Premier and Education Minister Gordon Wyant said in a media release.

“We know the impact this change has on families but during these times we are looking for everyone to contribute to the support for the broad community response to the COVID-19 virus.”

Those eligible for the emergency and pandemic response child-care spaces include:

• Employees working in hospitals, long-term care facilities, community and primary health, home care, personal care homes, labs, pharmacies, COVID-19 assessment and testing sites, scheduling departments, and payroll departments. That list includes nurses, physicians and physician clinic staff, emergency medical services staff, and other staff essential to the operations of these facilities/departments;
• Employees working directly in child protection, income assistance, and community living connected to the Ministry of Social Services;
• Employees working directly in residential services connected to the Ministry of Social Services;
• Child-care centre employees of licensed child-care facilities;
• Employees providing essential services at SaskPower, SaskEnergy, SaskTel, water and wastewater management; and,
• Employees providing essential services for police and fire.

The government noted that the list is subject to change.

Child-care centres that aren’t located in schools are operating as normal. Parents have been advised to prepare for making alternative arrangements.

Wyant maintained he will continue to make decisions based on the advice of the province’s chief medical health officer, Dr. Saqib Shahab.

“We need to continue to analyze this on an hour-to-hour, day-by-day basis to make sure we are doing the right thing,” Wyant said during a conference call.

“With the daycares that are open, they have their policies and procedures to make sure that risk is minimized for those people that are attending, particularly children.”

Wyant added there are other options to consider, including expanded daycare licences which would allow for other age groups to attend.

“Those are all certainly things that we’ll be looking at in terms of determining who needs to be provided with these emergency spaces,” he said.