In light of the recent school age care situations for gap care (after March 2020 for School Year 2019-2020 and for Summer 2020), districts needed to offer Emergency Child Care that is open to parents or guardians who are defined as an emergency responders.
Fall 2020-2021 is a dynamic situation for most programs. The options are being reviewed and there will be suggestions that may be better suited for the upcoming year's registration.
These are the current suggestions for districts trying to setup this emergency registration (needed before Fall 2020-2021). Note these steps must be completed in the following order to ensure the set up will go smoothly.
- Create a new Registration Option that allows for Pick your Day and/or Drop-in Contracts (Child Care > Registration Option> Add Registration Option > Check only Pick Your Day and Drop-In Contacts depending on what your program is offering).
- Under Registration Options, there is a setting for Require An Electronic Payment Method to be provided during Online Registration. When that is set to No, the parent will still see the option to add one. There is an option Continue without saving a Payment Method. That is the option parents will select since this is $0 care.
- Create a new Season within an existing (or new) Program (Child Care > Seasons > Add Season).
- If you need to ask new questions to confirm if the person completing the enrollment qualifies for care, you can use the Copy Template to copy your existing template and add the additional questions. (System > Question Templates > Select the desired template in the list then select Copy Template. Update with the additional questions then Create). If you are requiring that people confirm or validate that they qualify, you may want to consider making that the first question on the new copied template (i.e. Do you meet one of these criteria)? In addition, if you are setting the require payment methods to No (described above), you could add an 'Information No Answer' question as the last one explaining to parents to select that Continue if they do not wish to store a payment method.
- It is recommended to create new Sites for this care (to ensure that when approving contacts, they are for these specific contracts. It will also ensure that when the Child Care Attendance app is used, only contracts that are in the new Site are displayed). Ensure the online registration start and end dates are accurate. Ensure new unique Access Keys are set and communicated to site staff.
- Create a $0/day Rate and $0 /drop in Rate (Child Care > Rates> Add Rate, update the details making sure to check the boxes on the right for the Sites you have created).
- If parents/authorized pick ups are dropping off outside the building and staff are signing the students in or out (to keep equipment sanitized), it is recommended to ensure the staff person enter their name or initials so accurate records of which staff completed the Sign In/Out is captured.
- Important Note: If you are regularly adding dates to your Sites (as you continue to offer care), you will want to modify the end date of the Season to match to make it easier for staff to view the Site and other details on the Admin side.