Don’t worry.
That’s the advice, based on experience, being offered by the bosses at Rainbow Bears Child Care Center in Fall River to other child care centers staring dreadfully at the 31-page “Massachusetts Child and Youth Serving Programs Reopen Approach” minimum requirement for health and safety document, issued June 1 by the state Department of Early Education and Care.
“It’s not as bad as it seems. It’s doable,” said Jen DeAguiar, director of Rainbow Bears on Bayview Street which has, during the general COVID-19 lockdown, remained open as a day care for children of emergency workers.
Children wearing masks. Social distancing. Ramped-up cleaning schedules for facility and toys. These are the challenges for day care centers, whose priorities are to provide nurturing, loving care and education to the children.
“We have young kids here and they’re wearing masks and playing,” Assistant Director Danielle Holden said. “Not 100 percent all the time six feet apart, but they’re doing well.
“Once you get your feet wet, it’s not as bad as it sounds.”
Rainbow Bears is targeting June 29 to reopen its non-emergency day care. In the meantime staff is getting trained in the updated rules and regulations and guidelines.
“It’s different, but it’s not awful,” Holden said. “It can be done with a little elbow grease, and then it becomes routine.”
Circle time, for example, may have to be turned into big circle time, knee-to-knee formations scrapped and the teacher walking around while reading from a book.
DeAguiar said face mask wearing has been “the least of our issues,” adding that no child balking at wearing a face mask will be forced to wear one.
And, she emphasized, social distancing will not deprive of a sorely needed hug from staff.
Hugging “should not be all the time,” Holden said. “But if they’re distraught, we’ll hold them. Sometimes they’ll sit on your lap, their back toward you, facing away.”
Like a doctor wisely prescribing a medicine for off-label use, DeAguiar said one of the most common kitchen appliances can relieve the Herculean task of daily toy cleaning. “Dishwashers,” she said, “can be your best friend. It does the sanitizing for you. We just had a second one put in.”
The Rainbow Bears bosses sound confident that whatever other challenges may surface, they’ll be able to take care of business in order to keep taking care of the children.
“Childcare educators,” Holden said, “are known for thinking on their feet.”
“They (state) put into writing what we’ve been doing,” DeAguiar said. “It’s just doing it more.”
SouthCoast YMCA in Swansea has also been serving as a child care center for vulnerable children and essential workers.
“Y Staff have gotten super creative, finding ways to engage the kids in activities that allow for social distancing,” Maxine Hebert, executive director of the Dartmouth YMCA and provider of association oversight of all childcare programming at YMCA Southcoast, wrote in a text. “Our biggest challenge has been reprogramming our childcare staff to engage and interact from a distance. For anyone who works with kids, keeping social distance is the complete opposite of how we are accustomed to working and goes against our nurturing instinct.”
Concerning the reopening of the SouthCoast Y’s traditional child care programs, Hebert said the organization is “trying to navigate” through the state standards. “Reopening childcare is a 3-step process ending in approval from Department of Early Ed and Care,” she said.
Email Greg Sullivan at gsullivan@heraldnews.com. Follow him @GregSullivanHN.