Ontario to Open Childcare Centres

The province of Ontario is planning to exempt some childcare centres from the provincial order to close.  The decision was made in order to help frontline workers involved in dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak.

d. “By allowing select child care centres to open their doors during these challenging times, our province’s courageous frontline workers can rest assured knowing that their families are also being looked after.” Health Minister and Deputy Premier Christine Elliott said.  The initiative is a combined effort by service system managers and First Nations partners.

Health care and other frontline workers, including doctors, nurses, paramedics, firefighters, police, and correctional officers, will be able to access safe, local emergency child care. These child care centres will be required to follow existing health and safety requirements and have a plan in place should any staff, children or parents be exposed to the virus.

During this unprecedented situation, we need to do everything we can to ensure our health care and other frontline staff have the support they need to continue to work,” said Stephen Lecce, Minister of Education. “At the same time, we need to protect the safety of the staff and children at these centres. For that reason, we are putting strict measures in place, such as restricting the types of centres that can re-open and keeping the number of children in any one centre low.”

Once emergency child care centres open, a list of locations will be made available on ontario.ca/coronavirus.