Update from REAL on Child Care: February 25, 2022

Heartfelt thanks to all the UCE members and friends who offered help during the Evanston school closure that left families in a bind in the thick of the Omicron surge. Unscheduled closures hurt families who are already pushed to their limits, especially parents who face job loss if they miss even one day of work. Thinking of our District 65 neighbors, Jennifer Crosby approached Reverend Eileen and the REAL Planning Group about creating a pop-up child care. We reached out to the Joseph E. Hill Head Start program and they sent out an announcement. Jennifer identified a trained child care provider from the community and we scheduled volunteers in teams of three covering nine shifts. Volunteers gathered supplies, snacks, and meals. We figured out COVID protocols and testing with advice from Rev. Eileen and UCE’s COVID Task Force. Members gave cash donations for snacks, supplies, and the child care worker’s stipend. We reconfigured a classroom downstairs and made pop-up child care available for the three days before Christmas Eve. 

We made a difference for the family who took us up on our last-minute offer. The little boy who attended had a great time, and the volunteers did, too. Shirley Adams commented, “He felt very loved and got a lot of positive adult attention.”

We learned a great deal from this process. We are working on how to meet this need in a sustainable, effective, and scalable way. REAL Planning Group members met with the Evanston Early Childhood Council and we are reaching out to Evanston Cradle to Career. We will explore ways to gather information from families impacted by unplanned school closures to learn what would be most helpful for them. We are speaking with school administrators about what volunteers can do to help. We are learning requirements for volunteer classroom assistants and how to create activity bags designed for children to use at home in times of quarantine or home-based child care. 

We were moved and deeply grateful for every person who pitched in for the pop-up child care. Stay tuned!