How To Stabilize Supports For Families And Children During This Pandemic

As we focus on flattening the curve of the coronavirus pandemic and dealing with the economic crisis has created, we must also help parents continue to provide stability for their families. But which families are most at risk?

Even before the pandemic, there were major pigpens in this stabilizing web for many families who struggle to pay their bills and lack resources to cover emergencies. The pandemic and national economic crisis has widened those holes, with a rapidly growing number of parents losing their jobs.

These problems excessively affect parents with lower incomes or those who live from hand to mouth, but now these challenges are not confined only to families with low incomes.

People who work in restaurants, hotels, retails, transport industry are likely to be among the hardest hit, including many parents who live from paycheck to paycheck. Without jobs, many parents have lost health insurance (if they were lucky enough to have it from their employer in the first place) but bills have not ceased.

Many parents cannot look for a new job because of the tanking economy and because there are no schools or child care providers to look after their children, and they can’t ask older relatives to help because of the health risk. So what can be done?

COVID-19 and the necessary mitigation measures designed to protect public health have been a one-two punch of devastation for vulnerable households. Frontline service workers are risking their health, although many cannot access medical care because of a lack of insurance.

Of course, COVID-19 has not affected all households equally. Some families are fortunate to be able to continue to work uninterrupted from home, but this privilege is not universal.