Healthcare Crisis pt. 3: Childcare
The 3rd installment in a series of blogs unearthing why there is a crisis in staffing for healthcare workers.
Child Care:
The pandemic shut down many schools and daycares, resulting in daycare providers seeking work elsewhere causing an already plaguing issue to become severe. Many healthcare workers have young children, all day school begins at age 5 or 6 and is from around 7:40 to 3:30 leaving a 1 to 2 hour gap on each side, if not more as many work 12 hour shifts. Childcare or lack there of has been a problem for over a decade, but as with everything else it has grown even worse. The average cost of daycare for 1 child in Kansas is around $1,000 a month for an infant and $700 a month for a 3–4-year-old, a steep price for most Americans but for an entry level healthcare worker with 2 children their bring home paycheck is barely enough to cover daycare. There is also a sever lack of daycares, many must wait months for a spot for their child. Healthcare workers have shift hours, 2nd and third shift daycares are almost nonexistent, in fact I only found 1 in my area and it was full.
Consider a single mother with 2 children working as a C.N.A for $14/hr for 40 hr a week with a take home of approximately $482 a week. Subtract from that weekly income daycare and gasoline (considering that she even has a reliable vehicle) and the total is more like $50 a week after daycare and gasoline. As you can see, staying home and not working it is not a case of being lazy rather it is a wise financial move, with a strong bonus of being home with the children. The child tax credit that is now being delivered throughout the year in monthly installments rather than with tax refunds, is an even grater incentive to stay home as there is no mandate the money must be spent on childcare. To make the matter even worse most C.N.As make just enough not to qualify for free daycare. My thought is that if we really want to solve this issue then we must as a society cover over ½ the cost of daycare and even more for 2nd and 3rd shift. It is difficult but not impossible for Nursing homes and Hospitals to have their own daycares for their employees open for all shift and if an employee is made to work overtime the employer owned daycare would not add on extra fees for late pick ups as is the current practice of most daycares. This would be costly and messy for hospitals and nursing homes but if we really want to get serious about identifying and solving the issues in staffing, this might be an important step in the right direction.
The next blog will look into immigration as it relates to the healthcare worker shortage.
