Mass. child care is bouncing back 5 years after COVID, but many families still struggle — GBH
By Meghan Smith
The Guild of St. Agnes, which runs child care centers in Worcester, closed its doors when COVID hit, like many child care centers. When it re-opened in fall of 2020, enrollment was only two-thirds of what it had been before the pandemic. But now things have improved: Overall enrollment is not only up, but greater than what it was five years ago.
“Enrollment-wise, we’re back to normal and more,” said Sharon MacDonald, the centers’ executive director. “Which is fabulous.”
The child care sector was hit hard by the pandemic five years ago, but it also ushered in a new era of state funding, with hundreds of millions of dollars now set aside each year to directly help child care centers. Now, there are tens of thousand more child care spots available in Massachusetts than there were pre-COVID.
Even though funding has helped many bounce back, centers have been dealing with not enough staff and more behavioral issues among kids. Those same behavioral issues mean that centers would prefer to have even more staff than before. And, for many families, child care is still unaffordable and hard to find.
“The children that we’re seeing are very challenging,” MacDonald said. “It’s a trauma response — the pandemic was traumatic for children and families.”