The Directorate of Family and Morale, Welfare and Recreation will discuss new child care policies at the Community Information Exchange, July 29, at 9 a.m., on Facebook Live at https://www.facebook.com/usaghawaii. (Courtesy graphic)
U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii
Public Affairs Office
WHEELER ARMY AIRFIELD, Hawaii -- Currently, a number of changes are taking place in child care.
First, you should know, the Child and Youth Services (CYS) office has kept child development centers and school age centers open throughout COVID, to ensure children already enrolled, pre-COVID, had mission essential child care.
On July 1, CYS expanded child care availability and eliminated the need to have a mission essential memo signed by the supervisor.
On July 15, CYS began offering available spaces in their child development and school age centers to families registered on militarychildcare.com
With COVID restrictions, physical capacity at child development and school age centers has been significantly reduced. Child development centers have a total capacity of 890 and school age centers have a total capacity of 354 spaces. We have historically had a waitlist for child care in Hawaii, and this fact has been further impacted by COVID-19 physical capacity restrictions.
During our June Community Information Exchange, or CIE, we highlighted a Department of Defense policy change that established child care placement priorities and identified the categories that can be displaced by other priority levels. Parents already enrolled in child care have been receiving notification of this policy change through their Child and Youth Management System, or CYMS, notifications and will also receive a hard copy of the notification at the child care location. You can find the slide highlighted (above and) during the June CIE at https://home.army.mil/hawaii/application/files/6215/9296/6175/CIE_06.24.20.pdf.
The major change that will occur with this policy change is that effective Sept. 1st, children in lower priority categories can potentially be displaced from child care by higher categories. Again, this change becomes effective Sept. 1st, and parents will be provided 45 days notice to locate alternate child care if their child’s space has been identified for another placement priority.
We know that there is a growing concern surrounding child care availability with the uncertainty of school schedules for the upcoming year. CYS will provide full-day child care options throughout the school year.
Here are a couple of things to note and remember:
• If you need child care, you must be registered at militarychildcare.com and get on the wait list. If you anticipate a need for child care, do not wait to register.
• Children will be placed in child care based on their wait list priority.
• If you have concerns about child care, contact Parent Central Services at 808-655-5318 or (808) 655-8380. If you know you will be displaced from on-post child care, ask Parent Central Services what military free assistance options are available to you off post.
• We will discuss more information about child care at the CIE, this Wednesday, July 29th, at 9 a.m. on Garrison Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/usaghawaii.