Friends,
If you're able to stay home with your children, please do that. We've heard from some parents who are in dire need of child care and still need to work. For those parents, we've set up an urgent text line to match parents with safe, reliable child care options as a result of school closures. Each program will be limited to small pods of three children or less due to the virus and limiting exposure.
Parents can text “childcare” to (425) 200-5127 or email team@joinweekdays.com to learn about vetted child care options in your specific neighborhood.
Teachers and child care providers interested in offering child care can text “provider” to the same number, (425) 200-5127 and we'll quickly share info on getting you vetted and set up to support the community.
Over the last few days with school closures and parents scrambling, we're hearing from so many wonderful parents who need to continue working and are in dire need of safe, reliable child care options for the next few weeks. We've also heard from talented teachers and parents eager to help. I've spent the last two days studying the research on the virus, talking with parents, teachers, lawyers, government agencies, government officials and child care experts. The result was coming up the solution to match families looking for child care options with vetted in-home providers in neighborhoods. In keeping our entire community as safe as possible, we're asking each provider to keep to incredibly small in-home child care pods: three children or less per program. I'm also working with government agencies and elected officials to expedite background checks for providers so we can get more vetted providers up and running and am currently exploring if that might be possible.
In some ways, we've been preparing the resources and infrastructure to support this for months but of course, this has all developed quickly over the last few days. I'm grateful to our entire community--both new members and care providers who've been part of our network for the last year. Thank you for keeping our communities safe and helping families who need urgent care during this time.
Here's a link to our media announcement. You can also read about us in GeekWire here.
Please stay safe and healthy.
Shauna Causey, Founder of WEEKDAYS