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The impact of COVID-19, both in quality and quantity, on the field of early childhood education, ECE is immeasurable. However, as research shows, its impact on family child care (FCC), has been worse than other sectors of ECE. FCC providers worldwide have always perceived their work as a service to families and children, yet FCC homes have not received much attention and recognition from researchers and policymakers compared to center-based ECE programs. This phenomenological inquiry with 20 FCC providers in a large urban county in California highlights the financial challenges that FCC providers faced during the early part of the pandemic before they received financial support from the state in the spring of 2021. The cost of running the program was quite high because of reduced enrollment and the regular purchase of sanitary materials. To keep their programs afloat, some participants had to lay off their staff, others kept them without salary, others had to exhaust their savings, and most incurred credit card debt. Most of them also experienced psychosocial stress. Their financial hardships during the pandemic would have been far worse without the emergency funding received from the state. However, as experts warn, the field of ECE needs a permanent solution and the situation could be even worse after the emergency funds run out in 2024. The nation has witnessed the dedicated service of FCC providers during the pandemic, especially to families of essential workers. Much work is needed at empirical and policy levels to support and celebrate the service of FCC providers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The negative impacts of COVID 19 on children's holistic development have been reported by researchers around the world. This qualitative study explored teachers' and parents' perspectives on the impact of physical/social distancing and school closure policies on children's socioemotional development. The study was conducted in fall 2020. The sample included four U.S. Preschools teachers (for 4-year-olds), four international preschool teachers (for 4, 5-year-olds), three U.S. Kindergarten teaches (for 5-year-olds), and 4 U.S. parents of 4 and 5-year-olds. Interviews were conducted over Zoom. Participants shared that the social deprivation experienced by children such as lack of friendships, absence of peer learning and peer communication, loss of play time, and lack of socialization impacted their children's socialization skills, higher order thinking development, mental health, and activity levels. Participants also shared that their children exhibited externalizing behaviors such as acting out, throwing tantrums, seeking negative attention, aggressiveness, lying, and showing disrespect. Participants reported children's life skills acquisition issues such as their over reliance on parents and difficulty in performing routine tasks. Participating teachers who taught 5-years-olds reported lower levels of fine motor skills among their students. The findings of the study suggest that although children have experienced severe academic learning loss during the pandemic, the post-pandemic ECE curriculum must keep a strong socio-emotional and practical life skills focus which contributes to children's overall well-being. Future studies may adopt a mixed method design in multi-country contexts to evaluate the impact of interventions implemented by early childhood programs on children's socioemotional health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the spring of 2020, a customer thanked a grocery store employee for continuing to work during the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown, and the cashier replied, "Well, somebody has to pay the rent." Https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/immersive-story/2021/01/22/urgent-effective-action-required-to-quell-the-impact-of-covid-19-on-education-worldwide 21 Xafis V. "What is inconvenient for you is life-saving for me": How health inequities are playing out during the COVID-19 pandemic. Brief Review of the Literature The world has witnessed various health pandemics prior to COVID-19 outbreak. Since its outbreak, the COVID-19 pandemic has spread to over 200 countries (Jackson et al., [6]) and infected over 153 million people globally with over 3.5 million fatalities. [Extracted from the article]

The world has faced challenges from a variety of viral respiratory illnesses over the past few decades, including the 2002 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and the 2009 swine-origin pandemic (H1N1) influenza. However, the disaster management guidelines for Early Childhood Education (ECE) programs in California were limited to earthquake and fire drills before the pandemic. COVID-19 exposed the world's vulnerability to a pandemic and the frailty of early learning programs. The pandemic showed how unprepared the field was for such a disaster and the need for a comprehensive disaster preparedness plan for early education programs. This qualitative study with 20 family child care providers in a large urban county in California explored participants’ preparedness and implementational challenges of emergency guidelines before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and their suggestions for future emergencies. The results demonstrated participants’ lack of respiratory illness training. Despite their best efforts, they encountered numerous obstacles to executing the COVID-19 guidelines routinely and fully. Regular cleaning of surfaces and materials and maintaining social distance were the two hardest rules to observe. The results point to the necessity of post-pandemic adoption of provisions that will be beneficial for providers in both general emergencies and specific disaster circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]