Childcare for family resilience
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic caused high and prolonged levels of stress among families, especially those who were already contending with racism, poverty, and unstable housing. Even though the immediate challenges of the pandemic are over, disruptions to childcare and a lack of support for under-resourced families continue to cause distress and burnout.
“Stories of care” is a research project led by the Fielding-Miller Lab at the UC San Diego Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and conducted in partnership with the San Diego County YMCA and San Diego for Every Child . The project is funded by the California Department of Public Health as part of the California Collaborative for Pandemic Recovery and Readiness Research (CPR3) project.
Methods
We hosted 3 storytelling workshops across San Diego County. In small groups of 4-6, parents and caregivers were invited to imagine a family like theirs or those in their community. They imagined what circumstances their protagonist might face that would impact their burnout. Then they imagined what it would look like if childcare was a source of resilience for the whole family. Each group took 2 hours to create their story and we recorded the conversations, debates, and commentary that group members made along the way.
Thirty-six people participated in these storytelling workshops in October and November of 2023. Together they created 3 stories in English, 4 stories in Spanish, and 1 story in Vietnamese. Our team read through these stories and the full transcripts of each group's story-telling process many times to identify the themes that came up over and over again. We summarized these themes into three stories that captured the common plots, challenges, and solutions that community members imagined.
You can find our summary of themes at the end.
We invite you to read these while wondering "...What if?"
Elizabeth
Elizabeth and her husband live in a 2-bedroom apartment in San Diego with their children- Alexa, who is 3 years old, and Daniel, who is 4 years old. They don’t have extended family in San Diego. Both parents work long hours, and their children attend a childcare center that is about a 15 minute drive from their home. The family pays a little over $2000 for childcare for both kids, and $2500 for rent. Even though both of those are very reasonable prices for the area, those two costs alone account for a huge chunk of their monthly income. Recently, Elizabeth’s hours were switched to later in the day, so she struggles to pick her kids up in the afternoon. Her husband can only pick them up on his days off. On top of that, the family has one car, which recently broke down. For now, they will pay her neighbor to pick up the children.
Elizabeth feels stressed out all the time. She tries to destress by cooking or exercising during her limited free time. On one of her days off, Elizabeth makes a large, delicious dinner for her family. Her oldest, Daniel, refuses to eat anything on his plate. When Elizabeth asks why Daniel says it's because he prefers the fun stuff like pizza and processed snacks that they get at the childcare center. Elizabeth feels extremely defeated. She wants her children to enjoy and have access to healthy foods, and she feels like she has failed them.
Y fíjate que la una buena alimentación se refleja también en estos niveles, eh?... Entonces ahí entra todos esos niveles, también de cansancio emocional y físico. Una mala alimentación repercute en todos los aspectos de nuestras vidas y a veces no lo vemos así.. O lo pasamos por alto, por necesidades económicas, verdad? Porque no hay como alimentarte de una manera adecuada, porque es costoso, es costoso.
Elizabeth's neighbor works for the YMCA, and one day she tells Elizabeth about a new childcare childcare center that will be opening soon. The center focuses on outdoor play, and staff prepare snacks and meals for the kids with an emphasis on fresh fruits and vegetables. The neighbor doesn’t know the exact details, but she tells Elizabeth that the center is partly subsidized by the government somehow and will even offer a shuttle to transport kids home in the evenings!
Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would love [more transportation options from school]...I have to pick up my kids from school. And bring her here...
Speaker B: And then have a way to get them home
Speaker C: Transportation [is] big. Transportation home.
Speaker D: Kind of like a bus
Speaker C: Like a big bus program, or something like that.
Elizabeth easily finds contact information for the center online, and then calls them, bracing herself for a long waiting list and lots of paperwork to demonstrate that they are financially eligible.
Y aparte mi hija el papeleo es es algo. Yo nomás lo tuve tres meses. Y lo cerré porque era una de llenar papeles de todo-- para reportar todo. O sea, es mucho trabajo lo que piden para muy poco dinero. Entonces ahí es la diferencia...
Instead of those hurdles, an extremely helpful person picks up the phone immediately and tells Elizabeth that there is space available for both her kids. The sign-up process is easy and streamlined, and the cost is affordable for her family. Elizabeth feels like a weight has been lifted off her shoulders. On top of that, a few months later, Daniel starts expressing interest in the process of making dinner, and asking if he can help too. She loves the chance to spend quality time with him and that preparing dinner together is something they both enjoy. She feels proud that she can make sure her kids get healthy food at home and at childcare, and the extra time they save by taking advantage of the shuttle means the family can even go for walks together in the evening, too.
Maria
Maria is a 35-year old single mother who works as a cashier in a grocery store and has two children: Carlos, who is 10, and Sabrina, who is 7. Maria can speak English pretty well, but she feels more comfortable with Spanish, which is what her family speaks at home.
After many years of waiting, Carlos recently received an official ADHD diagnosis and Maria is working with his school to make sure he gets the support he needs now that she has the necessary paperwork. Carlos and Sabrina both go to the free after care program at their school. Maria knows that the after care staff are trying their best, but she is sometimes frustrated that they don’t seem to know how to support neurodiverse kids, and Carlos ends up getting in trouble a lot. She worries that it is starting to affect his self-esteem.
[Have] somebody on staff that...knows how to communicate in different ways....[M]ost of [provider's] councilors are young...they're almost like teenagers.
Maria has tried asking around to find alternative after school care options, but she doesn’t have any neighbors or friends who are able to watch her kids or help her with transportation to another center at the end of the school day.
Since Maria is a single mom, she is the only one who can stay home with the kids whenever they get sick. She has some PTO, but not enough, and all the time off work makes the family finances even tighter.
She's sick, or one of her kids are sick, and so she has to take time off.... [She needs] some way to fill in the money she's missing...It can be like... $500 [towards] rent or something like that to keep them from becoming homeless.
One day she gets a newsletter from her after-school program announcing that because of a new funding source there will be some exciting upgrades and changes. All of the care staff will receive high-quality training on how to support neurodiverse kids. There will also be a school bus available to take kids home from aftercare, just like the one available for kids who go home at the end of the school day. Plus, the center will have a new Resource Navigator position, a person who can help parents learn about and apply for a variety of resources to support family’s mental, physical, and financial wellbeing.
Hay muchos ayuda, no más que a veces falta información y que alguien te guíe o alguien te recomiende, alguien te ayude.
The navigator has walk-in office hours, so Maria is able to meet with them when she goes to pick her kids up after school a few weeks later. The navigator is fluent in Spanish and Maria feels very comfortable with them. Maria expresses her concerns about Carlos, and the navigator describes the new staff training, which makes Maria feel a lot better. The navigator also helps Maria connect with a job training program, and Maria is really excited at the prospect of getting a better job with better hours.
Usually promotions mean you work less. You get a more stable schedule and stuff like that... A promotion or a good change in jobs would decrease the burnout.”
Brenda
Brenda is Vietnamese-American and really struggles with finding decent, affordable housing. She lives in a cramped apartment with her three children, 1 year old Linh, 4 year old Duc, and 7 year old Anh. The apartment is much too small for them, and there is no yard to play in, which means her kids end up playing much too close to a busy street for her comfort. Brenda has been on the waitlist for Section 8 housing for a long time, but she knows it might still be years before she can get a voucher.
I mean, yeah, it's hard. You have to make three times the rent. Who makes that much money? Having a [housing voucher] would help my children play, do activities,...have their own hobbies without any sort of constrain and discomfort. I wish for my children to study well and have a career.
Brenda has several part-time jobs, and her hours change a lot from month to month. Her parents live across town and they do chip in as much as possible, but they are getting older and Brenda is worried about their health.
Brenda‘s current childcare situation is tenuous. It’s really hard to find a place that has space for both of the younger kids and is within a decent commute of her work and Anh’s school. Currently, both of the younger kids attend childcare at a neighbor’s house, but It's gotten really expensive, and she doesn’t feel like the neighbor really understands or appreciates Vietnamese culture, especially since they have made a few comments about the lunches she packs for Duc. Brenda worries about her kids becoming disconnected from Vietnamese culture. She loves taking them to local cultural events when she has time, but thinks it would be nice if they were also able to see their own culture represented in school.
Brenda was scrolling through social media when she saw a post in Vietnamese describing a new nonprofit childcare program in her area. She called the number and was quickly connected to a Vietnamese speaker who explained the program to her. The person she spoke to also described the values and mission of the program, and Brenda was pleased to hear that they celebrated the wide range of cultural backgrounds in her community. She learned that the program had a flexible month to month scheduling system and an emergency drop-in program for times that her parents became ill and couldn’t provide the care she’d planned on. Even better, they had availability for all of her kids and were very close to Anh’s school. Beyond childcare, the center also provided wraparound case management service for low-income families and could help her connect to other resources.
Brenda was very worried about what all of this might cost, but the person on the phone explained that it was all subsidized, and might even be free depending on her income. Brenda signed her kids up immediately. Very soon after that she was connected to a case manager who also spoke Vietnamese. When Brenda explained her housing situation and the long wait, the navigator compiled a list of potential housing resources Brenda could qualify for and sent them to her by email. She followed up on the housing resources, one of which was a universal basic income pilot for working single mothers. A few months later, she started receiving a check for $500 a month. With the money, she found a larger apartment that she, her kids, and her parents moved into together.
Best of all, her new place had a backyard where her kids could play and they could spend quality time together hanging out and barbequing.
If our career is good, our health is good, everything is good - then we don't need to worry anymore. With a house, with housing assistance, living in a neighborhood with clean air - my health improves, jobs goes well, kids in school and not addicted to anything... I’m still going to worry, but way less
Major Themes
Childcare can be an important source of mental, physical, and financial resilience for vulnerable families. The families we talked to told stories about real challenges, and imagined a number of ways that childcare could reduce burnout and improve their overall quality of life:
- Caregivers want high-quality childcare, with providers who are fairly compensated and well trained. They want to trust that their children are in a space that values their culture and aligns with their family values.
- Nutrition and access to high quality foods at home and at child care are extremely important, and something that parents and caregivers worry about a lot.
- Transportation is a major issue, many families feel like they are one mechanical break down away from catastrophe.
- The high cost of living impacts every aspect of family's lives, including their ability to access quality childcare. Housing and childcare are not separate issues.
- Families rely on mutual aid from friends, neighbors, and families to get by. Illness or other crises in their social network create major ripple effects in childcare.
- The existence of programs is not enough. Families need a way to find out about those resources and support accessing them.
