Parents brace for winter of discontent as daycares enforce strict COVID-19 protocols

Parents of youngchildren say the constant, looming threat of daycare closures is wreaking havoc on all aspects of their lives from their healthto their careers to their families' finances.

The Glebe Parents'Day Care location at First Avenue Public School is the latest child-care centre to report an outbreak of COVID-19, and will now be closed for at least 14 days, according to a letter to parents from Ottawa Public Health (OPH). According to OPH, there were 10 outbreaks in child-care or camp settings in the city as of Monday.

It's gonna be a really long fall and winter for many families.- Kristen Bignell, parent

Strict new public health protocols at the centres mean parents have to rush to pick up their children and wait in long lines to get them tested for COVID-19 at the first sign of symptoms, some of which resemblesymptoms of the common cold.

At River Heights Children's Centre in Orlans,parents have just 30 minutes to pick up their children once symptoms appear.

Kristen Bignell said she and her husband recently had to scrambleto figure out which one of them could leave work to pick up their three-year-old son after he coughedat the daycare.

"It's gonna be a really long fall and winter for many families," said Bignell. "I can't even imagine being in the shoes of a single parent."

Bignell said she was given the option to either have her son tested for COVID-19, or to keep him at home for 14 days. She decided to take him for testing, and is hopeful he will be able to return to daycare after he receives a negative result and is symptom-free for 24 hours.

"Our oldest, Adam, tends to get a lot of coughs during the fall and winter. At leastthat's what happened last year," said Bignell.

If that happens again this fall, Bignell knows she'll be spending hours waiting in line to get her son tested for COVID-19.

WATCH | The reality of testing rules:

Parents with kids in daycare say constantly getting tested will be difficult to maintain

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Kristen Bignell and Rebecca Shein both have daycare-age children who showed COVID-19 symptoms and had to be brought home. Both families are struggling to find the right balance as cold and flu season starts.

Other parents said they're feeling helpless about the new protocols, and feel they could have been better communicated.

"I'm just very frustrated and very overwhelmed by the decisionsthat we have to face," saidRebecca Schein, who spends $2,600 a month to send her two young children to Dalhousie Parents'Day Care Centre on Booth Street .

Schein has to continue paying whether her kids attend daycare or stay home, as they had torecently after they developed sniffles and fever.

"I know that this is in lots of ways an unknowable situation, but many parts of this were completely predicted in terms of fall surge," said Schein.

"If we pull the kids out of daycare cause we don't think it's safe, we have to somehow figure out how to do our jobs.We have two full-time jobs."