'Grassroots families need child care services first'
The Society for Community Organisation (SoCO) on Monday called on the government to prioritise access for grassroots families to child care services, saying the lack of support during the Covid-19 pandemic forced some mothers to stop working and stay home.  Since July last year, the organisation conducted three rounds of phone interviews and written questionnaires involving 200 mothers from grassroots families and around 100 child care centres. Results showed that around 65 percent of the mothers surveyed were forced to stop working to look after their kids as child care centres had suspended services. "Under the pandemic, [the centres] don't provide meal services. Some of them don't provide picking up services. Mothers need to take their children to the centre and take them home [after that]," said Sze Lai-shan, SoCO's deputy director.  Sze added that the resumption of in-person learning did not help much.  "Half-day school is a headache for the mothers. They cannot find a job easily because some children, for example, kindergarten students only go to school for two hours." Almost all mothers surveyed were under high stress when dealing with their children's emotions and following up with their homework. Among those who shared their struggles was a mother surnamed Ho with two kids aged three and seven, who said she had almost no income during the fifth Covid wave.  She said because she could not drop the kids off at their schools or a child care centre, she had to stay home and look after them, when classes were suspended. SoCO also urged the government to speed up the queue for child care services, pointing out that grassroots families had to wait for around a year for such services now.  According to the Education Bureau, there are now around 360,000 primary school children, but only around 6,000 spaces for child care services are available.  The organisation also urged the government to roll out after-school care services and increase manpower levels at child care centres.