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Loretta Boniti from Spectrum News spoke with Muffy Grant, Executive Director of NC Early Childhood Foundation, and Susan Perry, Chief Deputy Secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services about how families are navigating child care and work before and during COVID-19.
NCECF and its partners surveyed 802 working parents with young children in North Carolina with findings that include:
- 55 percent of working parents lost jobs or hours due to the COVID-10 pandemic.
- 70 percent have had difficulty finding a satisfactory child care arrangement—and about 10 percent couldn’t find one at all.
- 15 percent of rural families were accessing formal child care mid-pandemic, down from 44 percent pre-pandemic.
“There has been so much disruption during COVID-19 that we are seeing that the early care and education system is fragile, and it has also provided us an opportunity to see what great programs we have in our state that work…having a healthy supply of affordable, accessible childcare within our childcare system is a critical infrastructure in and of itself,” said Muffy Grant.
Listen to the full story here.