As the lock­down re­stric­tions im­ple­ment­ed by the Gov­ern­ment for COVID-19 are be­ing in­cre­men­tal­ly eased and peo­ple are re­quired to head back to work, there is now in­creased wor­ry and anx­i­ety among par­ents, es­pe­cial­ly sin­gle par­ents who have no al­ter­na­tive sup­port for their chil­dren, who will be out of school un­til Sep­tem­ber.

The sit­u­a­tion may be­come grave for some with Labour Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus yet to fi­nalise and ap­prove the pan­dem­ic leave which she pro­posed in March.

In a What­sApp re­sponse to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tion on its ap­proval sta­tus last week, Bap­tiste-Primus wrote, “The Cab­i­net has not yet ap­proved the work­place guide­lines, which are still en­gag­ing the at­ten­tion of the Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pose Com­mit­tee. As a con­se­quence, I am not in a po­si­tion to pro­nounce on this most im­por­tant mat­ter.”

The re­al­i­ty for some par­ents, there­fore, is that they do not know how they will take care of their chil­dren un­til Sep­tem­ber once the coun­try is ful­ly re­opened. Some par­ents shared their chal­lenges with Guardian Me­dia via a so­cial me­dia poll we con­duct­ed.

One moth­er said as an es­sen­tial work­er she had been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing un­easi­ness since schools were closed in March.

“My moth­er is not well and she has some age too and I can­not stay home. Right now she has been look­ing af­ter my two chil­dren who are mi­nors since their schools closed. I wor­ry a lot while I am at work be­cause what if some­thing hap­pens to her?” the moth­er, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, asked.

An­oth­er sin­gle par­ent said she has had no oth­er choice but to leave her chil­dren, who are mi­nors, at home alone un­til she gets home from work.

Ad­dress­ing her unique sit­u­a­tion mean­while, Lyra Thomp­son-Hollingsworth said, “I have some sup­port from my moth­er but three chil­dren un­der ten (two autis­tic) is a bit of a hand­ful for a se­nior cit­i­zen.”

Some par­ents al­so say with the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion around the cor­ner, there will be in­creas­ing ten­sion due to the un­avail­abil­i­ty of child­care fa­cil­i­ties which may still be closed or have less space due to phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing pro­to­cols they will have to im­ple­ment for COVID-19.

But the lengthy school clo­sure does not on­ly have an ad­verse ef­fect on par­ents.

Pre-school and day­care own­ers, as well as those who pro­vide trans­porta­tion for school chil­dren for a liv­ing, will al­so have to make dras­tic changes. Some of them told Guardian Me­dia they will take an­oth­er fi­nan­cial hit to make these changes and some are now even forced to look to oth­er means of rev­enue or make ca­reer changes.

Day­care own­er D Si­mon-Har­ri­son told Guardian Me­dia, “Al­though we have been blessed with such swift ac­tion on be­half of our na­tion to mit­i­gate the spread of this pan­dem­ic, we have suf­fered an eco­nom­ic blow like many oth­er small busi­ness­es.

“At first, we thought that it would on­ly be a few weeks un­til school re­sumed. In stark con­trast, we are about two months in with no sign of re­sum­ing busi­ness as usu­al. We felt that it was un­fair to ask par­ents to con­tin­ue to pay any manda­to­ry fees, as some of our coun­ter­parts were of­fer­ing for on­line-based re­sources such as the ones that we were al­ready shar­ing with our Ma­hogany fam­i­ly.

“As a re­sult, we sent out an of­fi­cial let­ter stat­ing that we would con­tin­ue to post videos of sto­ry­telling, greet­ings, nurs­ery rhymes, and even cur­ricu­lum-based videos us­ing fun ma­nip­u­la­tives. We asked on­ly for them to give vol­un­tary do­na­tions of ei­ther mon­ey or gro­ceries for aun­ties. This re­quest was met with some en­thu­si­asm, as a few par­ents have been sup­port­ing us through cash trans­fers and two through gro­cery do­na­tions.”

Bit­ter­sweet dilem­ma for some

These stres­sors can lead to des­per­ate at­tempts by par­ents to find res­o­lu­tions and even par­ent-child re­la­tion­ship break­downs, ac­cord­ing to psy­chol­o­gist Michele Carter.

Carter sug­gest­ed a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort at Gov­ern­ment, com­mu­ni­ty and work­place lev­els to help al­le­vi­ate some of the prob­lems be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced. She said oth­er than psy­cho­log­i­cal aid, im­me­di­ate phys­i­cal help for par­ents in this sit­u­a­tion was para­mount.

She be­lieves it will take the Min­istries of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Cul­ture and the Arts and Fi­nance to come to­geth­er with a more prac­ti­cal ac­tion plan that would ad­dress the is­sues spot on.

She said from a Gov­ern­ment per­spec­tive, there should be de­vel­op­ment and im­ple­men­ta­tion of psy­choso­cial pol­i­cy guide­lines for em­ploy­ers and em­ploy­ee as­sis­tance pro­gramme (EAP) ser­vices as part of em­ploy­ees’ ben­e­fits.

At the work­place lev­el, Carter said she once aware­ness has been raised, em­ploy­ers can seek to de­vel­op poli­cies and guide­lines to as­sist em­ploy­ees by ad­just­ing work hours, pro­vid­ing EAP as­sis­tance and where pos­si­ble, al­low for work from home.

So­cial work­er, coun­sel­lor and part-time par­ent­ing ed­u­ca­tor with Fam­i­lies In Ac­tion, Al­soona Boswell-Jack­son, mean­while said it was a bit­ter­sweet dilem­ma for par­ents dur­ing this time, par­tic­u­lar­ly sin­gle par­ents.

She said while on one hand there might be a feel­ing of ela­tion at go­ing back to work to re­turn to a sem­blance of eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty and pro­vide for their fam­i­ly, on the oth­er, there is the fear and anx­i­ety of hav­ing no im­me­di­ate fa­mil­ial or so­cial sup­port for their chil­dren.

“As a re­sult, some par­ents are forced to leave their chil­dren with neigh­bours and friends, where there is a pos­si­bil­i­ty of ex­po­sure to child mal­treat­ment in its var­i­ous forms — phys­i­cal, sex­u­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there is al­so the risk of the child con­tract­ing the coro­n­avirus due to oth­er per­sons vis­it­ing the lo­ca­tion the child is at and im­prop­er hy­giene prac­tices,” Boswell-Jack­son ar­gued.

In ad­di­tion, Boswell-Jack­son said due to des­per­a­tion of hav­ing been out of work for weeks and the over­pow­er­ing need to ful­fil the roles of pro­vid­ing and nur­tur­ing as­so­ci­at­ed with par­ent­ing, some par­ents would be now forced to take a fright­en­ing chance to leave chil­dren home alone with­out su­per­vi­sion, con­vinc­ing them­selves it’s on­ly for a short time and “the end jus­ti­fied the means.”

“Such dis­heart­en­ing sit­u­a­tions faced by par­ents who do not have al­ter­na­tive care for their chil­dren over­shad­ows the ela­tion of be­ing back out to earn an hon­est dol­lar with de­bil­i­tat­ing fears,” Boswell-Jack­son said.

“Fears of ex­pos­ing them­selves to the virus and tak­ing it home to their chil­dren, fears of be­com­ing sick and not be­ing able to pro­vide, fears of plac­ing their chil­dren’s lives in dan­ger by ei­ther abuse or be­ing home alone, fear of los­ing the said job be­cause of con­stant­ly hav­ing to ad­dress con­cerns at home while at work or worst yet, fear of dy­ing and leav­ing their chil­dren.”

Asked what she be­lieved could be done at a na­tion­al lev­el, Boswell-Jack­son said the sad re­al­i­ty was that there was very lit­tle the Gov­ern­ment could tan­gi­bly do to ease the sit­u­a­tion par­ents face with child care ser­vices at this time, giv­en the fact that phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing and crowd lim­it re­stric­tions means less chil­dren can be ac­com­mo­dat­ed in one place at any giv­en time.

At a com­mu­ni­ty lev­el, she con­tend­ed while there might be a want to main­tain the “vil­lage rais­ing the child” phi­los­o­phy, it would be a chal­leng­ing feat dur­ing this sea­son of un­cer­tain­ty and self-preser­va­tion which COVID-19 has brought on.

“The fact is the same way the par­ent has con­cerns about the child con­tract­ing COVID-19 from the lo­ca­tion they are sent to, the same way the per­sons of that lo­ca­tion have con­cerns about con­tract­ing the virus from the child be­ing back and forth from be­ing with you, be­cause they don’t know who you would have been in con­tact with dur­ing your work­day,” Boswell-Jack­son ar­gued.

“The domi­no ef­fect is that the so­cial glue that has been hold­ing com­mu­ni­ties to­geth­er is now quick­ly los­ing its bond­ing prop­er­ties due to the so­cial fall­outs of COVID-19.”

How to care for chil­dren dur­ing pan­dem­ic

Search your sup­port pool: Nev­er leave mi­nors alone at home for even one minute. It is against the law and you can be ar­rest­ed for such. Search your pool of fam­i­ly mem­bers and/or friends and you must find some­one that you are com­fort­able with to leave your chil­dren. It may even mean the per­son com­ing to your home where you and your chil­dren might be a lit­tle more com­fort­able and you will have more con­trol of sani­ti­sa­tion prac­tices and vis­i­tor con­trol.

Com­mu­ni­cate: Talk to your chil­dren about what is hap­pen­ing and be open and age-ap­pro­pri­ate as you ex­plain your work sched­ule and where they may have to stay.

Dis­cuss good touch and bad touch: Have con­ver­sa­tions with them as they tell you all that they did dur­ing the day. Use this op­por­tu­ni­ty to look for changes in moods, tone and ex­pres­sions. If you can, pro­vide a sim­ple cell­phone for easy ac­cess to your chil­dren, or have the phone num­ber of the care­giv­er on speed di­al. Check-in at least twice with them dur­ing your ab­sence.

Set ground rules: If an old­er sib­ling is tak­ing care of the younger ones in your ab­sence, try to leave meals al­ready pre­pared so as to min­imise the use of the stove. Leave emer­gency num­bers vis­i­ble on the walls, re­frig­er­a­tor, or speed di­al on at least one mo­bile de­vice. Try to check in at home at in­ter­vals con­ve­nient to your work sched­ule or have some­one you know and trust check-in for you. Al­so, leave a phone con­tact where you can be reached.

Have a fam­i­ly emer­gency es­cape plan: Prac­tice it with the chil­dren. Let them be aware of where keys are and prac­tice putting keys in one place so that it will be­come a habit. —Al­soona Boswell-Jack­son (So­cial Work­er)