I need help figuring this out! I have a 5yo and a 2 yo who will hopefully be in kindergarten and preschool this fall I need summer child care but I can’t figure out a good option. We are both essential workers who never stopped working outside the home, although I missed a lot of work when schools first closed since I had no child care. My husband has relatively low exposure risk at work since he works alone in a stall (mechanic welder) for most of the day, but does encounter coworkers wearing masks and at lunch without masks. I am a nurse, but I only work 2 days a week and at a children’s hospital so we have minimal cases. We probably have one or two at a time on the whole floor, we test everyone, and I haven’t even had a positive as my patient yet.

We only need child care in the hours our work overlaps, like 12-5, and it’s only 1 day a week since I work some weekends. Honestly, it’s always been a challenge to find good part time consistent baby sitters but now with covid it’s even harder! Last week my husband drove the kids to my mother in law’s and I picked them up, but it’s fairly inconvenient to do that, about 1 hour driving there in traffic and 30 min back to my house.

I was thinking about posting a job for 5 hours 2 days a week, at a good 5$ above the normal hourly rate as an incentive, but I am not really into the idea of sharing a babysitter with other families when we are still fairly strict about socializing. And I don’t know if sitters and families would be ok with our jobs and potential exposure anyways! Plus the sitter themselves... any advice or creative solutions?