Giving Compass' Take:
- Libby Rainey reports on the Los Angeles wildfires' impact on child care, emphasizing that 500 child care spaces were in impacted areas.
- How can donors support long-term recovery for child care providers in the communities impacted by the Palisades, Eaton, and Hurst fires?
- Learn more about disaster relief and recovery and how you can help.
- Search our Guide to Good for nonprofits focused on disaster philanthropy.
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In an instant, Blanca Carrillo and her daughter Aurys Hernandez lost everything. Their home in Altadena was also the place they’d built a thriving daycare for young children. So when it burned in the Eaton Fire, they were left homeless and without work all at the same time, illustrating the wildfires' impact on child care.
“Overnight our home and our livelihood is gone,” Carrillo said through a translator from a family member’s apartment in Arcadia.
It’s a disaster replicated thousands of times over, as many in L.A. County begin to confront how they’ll rebuild their lives after the fires, showing the wildfires' impact on child care. For child care providers, this feeling is particularly acute: Many say they know that their work is critical to allowing families to find new housing or return to work.
But they’re also trying to figure out how they themselves will recover, or stay afloat at all.
“What we want is [to] continue working,” Hernandez said. “I need just a house … where I can have our daycare again.”
Crisis on Top of Crisis
More than 500 child care spaces were in areas affected by the Palisades, Eaton and Hurst fires, according to L.A. County figures. That’s almost 7% of all licensed child care facilities in the county.
Some have already reopened, others await clean-up to clear all the debris, and some are gone entirely — refuges and second homes for some of the county’s youngest Angelenos turned to ash overnight.
Debra Colman, director of the L.A. County Office for the Advancement of Early Care and Education, said this comes as the child care system in Los Angeles was already in crisis, with too few providers and too little pay.
“We don’t have nearly enough licensed programs for all of the families in need,” Colman said, stating there are just under 8,000 facilities for more than 750,000 young children. (That’s almost 94 kids per facility.)
Read the full article about the wildfires' impact on child care by Libby Rainey at The 74.