![]() These conditions have left her, and many other parents in the state, in a nearly impossible situation. Pratt says other parents have told her they can’t find childcare or can’t afford the care they can find. And Pratt and her family can’t afford to pay more right now, Workers say a workforce shortage in the childcare industry is making it especially tricky to find care right now. Pratt has a stipend from Lakes Region Community Services to help her find care for Mya, but it only offers $15 an hour, for 10 hours a week, and the agency hasn’t found anyone yet. “How can you pay for daycare, if you get paid $12-$15 an hour, and don’t have enough left over?” “It’s a wage issue for people,” Pratt says. And they don’t pay enough for Pratt to hire someone who can meet Maya’s needs. Although the pandemic made work arrangements more flexible for some, Pratt says many of the jobs she’s seen aren’t flexible enough to allow her to do that. Her old job fit her schedule – she could be home by the time Mya got off the bus at 2 p.m. Now, as COVID-19 cases are slowing down, Mya’s school is open more consistently, and Pratt can search for a new job while her husband picks up extra hours at a local warehouse.īut even with unemployment running at around 3% in New Hampshire, it hasn’t been easy. “It’s pretty much full time, because if I did not, my daughter would also be unemployed,” she says. Pratt also looks after her 8-month-old granddaughter Bailey, while Bailey’s mother is at work. When Mya’s school closed down during the pandemic, Pratt became Mya’s everything: her teacher, physical therapist, occupational therapist and speech therapist. She needs help doing everything from keeping herself fed to using the bathroom. Mya is 18 and autistic, with developmental and cognitive delays. Her two oldest kids are independent, but Mya, her youngest, requires a lot of care. The lack of available jobs in her field, her lack of a college degree and her age have all presented challenges. She faced several barriers in her search for employment. Now 47, her career, she says, “was a part of who I was.” She recalls how people looked to her “as that professional if they had a question on layout, design, printing or marketing.”īut Pratt lost her job in February 2020, right before the pandemic hit, and it became clear pretty quickly that returning to the workforce was not possible. She’s worked in marketing and printing, and her flexibility is a point of pride. ![]() Since she was 19, Sherry Pratt easily hopped from one job to the next.
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