‘Hard times on top of hard times’: families and child care providers in the aftermath of Helene ...Middle East

Three weeks after Helene hit Western North Carolina, Marcia Whitney thought she was close to a breakthrough. The president of Verner Center for Early Learning was desperate to reopen and help their families and children return to at least some of their routines.

Through her involvement in the Rotary Club of Asheville, Whitney secured a donated water filtration system, capable of filtering up to 20,000 gallons per day. Locals with water engineering experience had set it up, and it was ready to go.

But the NC Department of Public Health’s Environmental Health Specialists wouldn’t approve use of this water for the Verner Center’s two facilities. The reason? Though the water tested as clean, the filtration system didn’t have a chlorine residual — a detectable level of chlorine required in the public water supplies by the EPA — to add to the water.

“We couldn’t have used it as potable water in our child care centers,” Whitney explained. “I went to the Director of the [North Carolina Department] Division of Health and Human Services for the state. I had state senators involved.”

at home [but] it can’t be used to wash their hands here.”

The reopening of early childhood education centers like Verner were dependent on approval from the state. More than 100 child care licensing consultants, as well as 10 regional child care environmental health specialists assisted with helping centers reopen after Helene. But the process was a frustrating endeavor for many centers, as they waited for guidance from the state on what alternative water supplies were acceptable.

After Verner’s potential water supply from the Rotary was denied, the NC Department of Health and Human Services and NC Division of Child Development and Early Education approved a different emergency operation plan on October 23. That plan included first boiling and cooling water, and then setting up a “continuous flow spigot container.” Verner made this happen with “thousands of dollars’ worth” of food-grade plastic jugs with spigots that Whitney had the foresight to order days after the storm.

Then, the facilities waited for inspections by state officials, which took place October 28 and 29. Finally on November 4, both Verner sites reopened for the 200 plus children it serves. Students had been out of class for over five weeks.

This “water saga,” as Whitney calls it, is one example of early childhood centers’ challenging path to reopening after Helene. The weeks-long, and in some cases months-long, closures after Helene had cascading effects for the families who rely on childcare in order to be able to work, and for the staff employed by these centers. Nearly 80% of families at Verner are eligible for free or low-cost childcare because of their financial circumstances.

“We’re the workforce behind the workforce,” Whitney said. “If we’re not open, none of the businesses are going to get their workers.”

‘Nobody knew what was going to be acceptable’

Early childhood education centers in North Carolina are a patchwork of full-time public, nonprofit and for-profit providers who are licensed through the NC Division of Child Development and Early Education. Some families also opt for unlicensed providers, which typically provide half- or partial-day care and are not monitored by state agencies.

There are 820 licensed early childhood education providers in the 25 western North Carolina counties deemed disaster areas by FEMA following Helene, according to state officials. While most have reopened, damage to nine centers will prevent them reopening “in the near future,” according to NC Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Kelly Haight Connor. Another three are “operational” (meaning, their license is still open), but they closed for staffing or programmatic reasons. And 23 providers are operating in emergency locations.

It’s unknown how many children haven’t returned to their original provider. Connor says the fluctuations in enrollment at early child care centers are not reported to the state. However, as of December 1, sites that were still closed due to damage from Helene had capacity for 505 children.

With the systemic lack of child care options already taxing families, providers knew reopening was a critical part of recovery from Helene. Some local childcare providers describe confusing instructions about the state’s process for reopening and where they were supposed to submit their emergency operations plans.

Buncombe Partnership for Children Executive Director Amy Barry says a lot of frustration came from a lack of clear direction on requirements for a reopening plan.

“I was kind of astounded that the Division of Child Development and Early Education, if they knew what was approvable, why not put out [some templates]?” Barry said, adding that guidance about acceptable water containers would have been particularly appreciated. “It would have made things move more quickly and been less of a burden to directors,” she said.

executive order allowed “flexibilities” for child care providers to help them reopen after Helene knocked out water systems across the region. Some of those flexibilities were outlined by the USDA with regard to serving meals, but there weren’t specifications on the requirements that centers “must provide water with gravity flow for handwashing.”

During October, Buncombe Partnership for Children hosted twice-weekly meetings for early childhood education leaders to share knowledge and resources. “Everybody would go to those meetings and be like, ‘Okay, so what are these flexibilities?’ ‘I don’t know,’” the Verner Center’s Whitney recalled.”‘So what do we need to do with this water plan?’ ‘I don’t know.’”

“Nobody knew what was going to be acceptable,” she added.

When one program’s alternative water plan finally got approved, they all felt relieved to have a template of sorts. But some also believe that valuable time and resources were wasted on trial and error.

“There were [programs] who had to submit [emergency plans] three times,” Barry said. “Families were getting really upset because they needed care.”

‘Hard times on top of hard times’

Parents of small children went weeks without childcare by relying on their social networks—or toughing it out themselves.

Keana Blackburn had her five-year–old son home from his West Asheville preschool every day for five weeks, minus a couple days he spent with his father. Blackburn, a peer support for a recovery organization, worked remotely at home amid finding ways to entertain him. He couldn’t use his tablet because the Internet was down or play outside safely due to storm damage. “I wasn’t really getting any work done,” she said.

hard.”

Some families banded together while child care centers were closed. Speech Pathologist Laura McWilliams had to find a solution for her three kids, ages 18 months to five years old. Two of them are usually at Mission Child Development Center, but that program was shut down for over a month due to flooding.

“We essentially became a shuffling daycare situation where one parent would offer their house, while some parents could work or fix their house,” McWilliams said, adding that her home also sustained roof damage. “And then the next week, somebody else would offer their house for the next few days.”

 “nanny-share” in one person’s home; for one week, about five families split the cost with each other.

Overall, McWilliams found navigating childcare after Helene to be stressful—“hard times on top of hard times,” as she put it. During the COVID-19 pandemic “the CDC was guiding a lot of what was happening in the different daycare communities,” she said. “With the hurricane fallout, you’re kind of at the mercy of the facility.”

In Buncombe County, eight of 91 licensed child care centers and providers were severely impacted, according to Buncombe Partnership for Children. Of those eight, two had playground damage, like a tree falling on the equipment, and five severely flooded.

Fortunately, Helene did not destroy any complete child care buildings in Buncombe, but it did cause enough damage that three centers are still closed awaiting construction repairs, according to Buncombe Partnership for Families Director of Child Care Resources Jenny Vial. Building Blocks Child Care Center Inc. in West Asheville is closed. The Christine Avery Center’s Valley campus in Swannanoa is also closed but the program is operating at another site. Additionally, one home-based child care is waiting to learn how high they have to raise their house up in order to rebuild, Vial said. These locations aren’t anticipated to reopen in their original locations until at least January.

Six other programs in Henderson, Transylvania, Yancey and Watauga County remain closed due to damage. Seven programs in western North Carolina are operating at emergency relocation sites.

Keeping the system afloat

 to continue to pay staff full salary and benefits while not operational, so long as it had cash reserves to do so.

“That allowed people to breathe,” said ...

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