Growing Coronal Needs for "Online Childcare" August 6 21:24

Against the backdrop of the spread of the new coronavirus, there is an increasing need for online childcare at homes that voluntarily refrain from using daycare.

Online childcare is a service in which nursery teachers read songs and picture books to children at home over the Internet. The number of users has increased since April due to the declaration of an emergency.

Among them, Ikuka Satomi, an employee of Yokohama City, began using online childcare services for her eldest daughter, who was three years old, last month.

My husband and wife usually send my eldest daughter to a nursery school in the city, but due to the increase in the number of infected people, I have reduced the number of days I voluntarily go to the park from the middle of last month, and work twice a week to work from home for children I am watching.

In April and May when the emergency declaration was issued, I also refrained from going to the park at the request of the nursery school, but I decided to use it because I could hardly work at that time.

Mr. Satomi said at the time, "When I got to work, I had to interrupt my work and deal with my child, which reduced efficiency and productivity, and I was frustrated and hit the child mentally. I was talking."

On this day, children from multiple households were connected online, and dance and picture books were read by qualified staff such as nursery teachers and kindergarten teachers.

While the eldest daughter was enjoying the movements of the staff in response to the movements of the staff on the screen and waving his hands in response to the voice, Mr. Satomi occasionally worked while speaking.

Currently, since it is one hour each time, the effect of improving work efficiency at home is limited, but he says that he hopes to further enhance the service in the future.

Mr. Satomi said, "It is very helpful to have online childcare. I think that if the number of users increases, the time for children to be enrolled in the online nursery will increase, so I think that work efficiency and productivity will increase a little more. I think."

This service was started in late April by a private company that provides IT services related to childcare, and the operating costs are collected through cloud funding on the Internet, which does not impose a financial burden on users.

According to the operating company, around 700 families, mainly in the Tokyo metropolitan area and Osaka, used the service between April and June, when calls for childcare center closures and self-restraint continued throughout the country. It means that there are a lot of applications.

The movement to introduce it as a local government

Some local governments are also promoting the introduction of online childcare in case they need to close the nursery school or call for refraining from attending.

In Matsudo City, Chiba Prefecture, we distributed tablet terminals to authorized nursery schools in the city as one of the supplementary support measures for watching children and home care, and started training for nursery teachers last month.

In the training, nursery teachers talk to children by connecting them to homes that are voluntarily refraining from going to school due to an increase in the number of infected people, through a web conference system.

The children cheerfully answered questions when a familiar nursery teacher appeared on the screen.

In the training, I made it possible for children to lose their concentration in about 10 minutes, so I could do it together, or switch to a face shield from the middle because the facial expression is difficult to convey if you keep wearing a mask, what should you do? I was continuing trial and error to see if I could hold it over the screen.

A nursery teacher in his 50s said, “It was very easy to do because I understood the children's reactions and how they were having fun through the screen. I thought that it was a very useful tool because I could send out what the children could enjoy from here. I was talking."

By October this year, Matsudo City plans to develop an environment where online childcare can be used at all licensed childcare facilities in the city, and according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, it is rare for a local government to introduce it. is.

General Manager Yamauchi of the Childcare Division, Matsudo City said, “If the child stays at home for a long time, both children and adults will be stressed. Parents decided that it was very difficult to balance work and childcare, so I decided to introduce it. If it becomes one of the new options in the age of with corona."

Balancing work from home and raising children

There are also survey results that show that it is difficult to balance working from home and raising children.

In early May, a group made up of double-working parents investigated the impact on work for parents of preschoolers in early May.

When asked about what percentage of work they can handle compared to before, out of the 1,600
respondents, 12% of the respondents answered that they could not do it at all, 12% were
reduced to about 30%. The majority accounted for 10% of the people,
▼ about
50 % to 12%, etc., and the amount of work that can be done was less than half compared to the previous time, and the majority answered.

The group who conducted the questionnaire said, "Understanding the premise that it is difficult to balance working from home and raising children, we should consider what to do when group childcare is not possible. If childcare is absolutely necessary, we will definitely accept it at the nursery school. , I would like you to consider online childcare for home-based homes even for a short period of time."

Expert "States and local governments should consider the difference between homes that cannot be accepted"

Regarding the spread of online childcare while the infection is spreading, Professor Kiyomi Akita of the Graduate School of Education, The University of Tokyo, who is familiar with the issue of childcare, says, ``The efforts of the nursery school and the support of the company will make children have more fun time. Guarantee is an important piece of wisdom, especially for parents working from home, which can be a big help in terms of parenting support and child care."

On the other hand,
▼ medical workers and other so-called "essential workers" who do not take time off from work to maintain social functions are forced to leave their children at daycare centers, etc.
▼ The communication environment is not set up due to financial reasons. He
points out that homes have many challenges , such as the lack of online childcare .

In addition, “I understand that online childcare is a substitute for day-to-day childcare to prevent infection. The national government and local governments take into consideration the great difference from families who cannot receive online childcare. I need to do that."