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By Dori Modney with files from Gov't of Alberta

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Alberta expands child care for essential workers

Apr 1, 2020 | 5:30 PM

EDMONTON, AB. — The province is expanding eligibility for selected licensed child care centres to offer child care for all essential service workers.

Along with previously eligible front-line health-care workers, critical infrastructure workers and first responders, child care is now available to anyone who works in the critical areas outlined as essential by government.

Rebecca Schulz, Minister of Children’s Services, says, “Access to child care should not be a barrier for those who are doing the work required to maintain essential services for all Albertans. We are grateful to the workers for continuing to get the job done and we thank those child care operators for stepping up to provide this important service.”

Parents working in the specifiied fields, can contact the child care centres that are open in their communities. An updated list of these centres can be found at alberta.ca/COVID19 (under Info for Albertans).

Child care centres have reopened in Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer, Devon, Fort McMurray, Fort Saskatchewan, Grande Prairie, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat and Stony Plain. Overall, the province says these centres are at eight per cent of their allotted capacity, so there is room to expand eligibility.

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The government is also reopening spaces in four other communities and working with Municipal Affairs, the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association and Rural Municipalities of Alberta to identify other areas of need.

A total of 30 people, including staff, are limited in the childcare centres, which will adhere to strict sanitization practices based on specific instructions from Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s chief medical officer of health. Dr. Hinshaw, underscores that parents who are eligible should only access this child care if it is the only way they will be able to go to their work in a core service sector.

All other licensed child care centres are to remain closed, excluding approved family day homes, which are limited to six children, not including the operators’ own children.