Governor Orders Implementation Of Child Care System For Essential Personnel

March 18, 2020

Gov. Scott is ordering the implementation of a child care system for the children of essential personnel on the frontlines, fighting the coronavirus threat, including state employees.

From Barton Chronicle story:

“Teach­ers, child­care providers and school sup­port staff are go­ing to be as crit­i­cal to our re­sponse as our doc­tors, nurses and health­care sup­port staff,” said Gov­er­nor Phil Scott. “That’s why, even as we ask the pub­lic to step back to help slow the spread of this virus, we are ask­ing oth­ers, in­clud­ing our ed­u­ca­tors and child care providers, to step in and pro­vide a crit­i­cal ser­vice so those who are on the front­lines of our re­sponse can con­tinue to care for the sick, pro­tect the pub­lic and man­age this evolv­ing chal­lenge. I am in­cred­i­bly proud of the self­less­ness of these pub­lic ser­vants at this time of need.”

Es­sen­tial per­sons are de­fined as:

  • Providers of health­care in­clud­ing, but not lim­ited to, work­ers at clin­ics, hos­pi­tals, Fed­er­ally Qual­i­fied Health Cen­ters (FQHCs), nurs­ing homes, long-term care and post-acute care fa­cil­i­ties, respite houses, VNAs, des­ig­nated agen­cies and emer­gency med­ical ser­vices;
  • Crim­i­nal jus­tice per­son­nel in­clud­ing those in law en­force­ment, courts, and cor­rec­tional ser­vices;
  • Pub­lic health em­ploy­ees;
  • Fire­fight­ers;
  • Ver­mont Na­tional Guard per­son­nel called to duty for this re­sponse;
  • Other first re­spon­ders and state em­ploy­ees de­ter­mined to be es­sen­tial for re­sponse to this cri­sis un­der the State Emer­gency Op­er­a­tions Cen­ter; and
  • Staff and providers of child­care and ed­u­ca­tion ser­vices (in­clud­ing cus­to­dial and kitchen staff and other sup­port staff) for chil­dren of other “es­sen­tial per­sons.”

The de­f­i­n­i­tion of es­sen­tial per­sons may evolve as needed to re­spond to the cri­sis.

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