Child Care Needs Survey for Essential Services Workers

The Cowichan Valley School District is responding to our community and developing processes in how we can support our essential service workers and their families during the COVID-19 pandemic. Childcare has been identified as a need in our community that we can help with. To guide this plan, and determine the childcare need in our community, a short survey has been created to explore where in our region assistance is needed and the number of children in a household requiring childcare.

The provincial government has asked school districts to help support our essential service workers and families. While there is no standard provincial definition of an “essential service worker” we have been provided with some general guidance… Essential Service Workers (ESWs) are those individuals considered critical to preserving life, health and societal functioning - including emergency responders, front-line health care workers, and critical infrastructure and supply chain (e.g. food, medicine) workers. The Ministry is asking school districts and independent school authorities to follow the definition above and prioritize services and supports to ESWs as follows: 


Tier 1: healthcare workers and emergency responders; 


Tier 2: workers supporting vulnerable populations (e.g. social workers, income assistance workers); utilities workers and workers supporting key supply chain functions (e.g. grocery store workers, warehouse workers); and 


Tier 3: teachers and childcare workers who do not have access to childcare and who are providing care or instruction to children of ESWs.

In order for our district to understand the need in our community we are asking you to complete these short survey questions so we can plan support for our essential service workers.