BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — On Saturday, the Western New York Child Care action team held its second annual action day.
“The reason that we have days like today is to give child care providers an active live and in color voice,” co-founder of the Western New York Child Care Action Team Vonetta Rhodes said.
The organization brings in a host of child care providers, like Rickeyda Brown of the Teddy Bear Junction Daycare, to speak on the struggles they’ve been facing during the pandemic.
‘Back in March, I believe I had COVID, so I had to close for a while. And with me closing, I did lose a lot of children that were attending beforehand,” Brown said.
Since reopening, Brown says she has only had a handful of kids at a time.
“I don’t have hardly any children," she said. "I can keep up to 16 children. I don't even have close to that. So you know, it's kind of hard."
Brown says many of her clients cannot afford her child care services without assistance from the Department of Social Services. Or, her clients have lost their jobs.
“[Child care services] should not be considered a business sector that can only survive off the payment of parents,”Rhodes said. “We need a better way, a better way to rewrite that system of access to any type of government funding that will support childcare.”
Rhodes is asking the government to step in and help the child care industry survive.
