Supporting our UW working families
Many in our UW community are experiencing a stressful back-to-school season. Child care closures and remote learning continue to pose significant challenges to employee and student caregivers, and those providing care for adults and elders continue to face unique challenges due to resource constraints and health concerns for older and vulnerable populations.
UW Human Resources continues to work with on-campus and community partners to enhance caregiving supports and to inform our community about them. Our existing resources include:
- The COVID-19 child care resources website, which is being updated regularly with child care options and financial resources to support our families.
- The parenting@uw.edu listserv is a forum for real-time information about new child care resources and programs. Click here to join the list.
- UWHR has introduced Komae, a cooperative child care app that enables parents to identify and vet families with similar parenting styles and COVID-19 hygiene practices to share child care and education resources.
- The UW College of Education has created a website to connect families interested in hiring students to provide tutoring or enrichment opportunities with students interested in work opportunities. Learn about this service and post a job on the UW College of Education Community Job Board.
- The University’s backup care programs continue to be available to support your unexpected needs for child or adult care. While backup care options were limited during the COVID-19 surge this spring, our providers report that they are currently able to fill most backup care requests, with in-home care being the easiest to accommodate.
We are actively exploring additional resources that can support parents with remote learning and are creating tools and training opportunities to help managers and HR administrators help employees who are trying to balance work and caregiving responsibilities