Childcare in COVID-19: assessing resilience of service critical infrastructures

Childcare, a service critical infrastructure, was under stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic highlighted the need for robust capacity in childcare to support the function of workers within healthcare and emergency response, both service-based infrastructures; however the national response locking down businesses pushed many children back into the home, reducing demand for childcare and threatening childcare facilities’ fiscal viability to remain in business. For many providers, the pandemic and its economic fallout are far from over, meaning the ultimate resiliency of childcare provision is yet to be determined. This paper is part of a larger study that examines the experiences of such childcare providers at the local level in the metropolitan region of Rochester, NY USA. The study provides a method to assess their critical operational capacities, and the longer term findings will assess the effectiveness of their adaptive decision-making to determine whether a specific combination of focused planning, COVID-19 case management strategies, economic decisions, and enrollment capacity resumption promoted recovery and resiliency to sustain the robust level of childcare service provision that communities need in times of crisis and beyond. Implications for this research extend to disruption of all kinds that require human capital, especially climate-induced disruptions, including fires, water shortages, etc. and technological disruptions such as electric grid instability, cyberattacks, and such.