MOSES LAKE — As families prepare for students returning to school under unprecedented conditions, the Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families is working to assist and support families moving forward.

Debra Johnson, DCYF director of communications, said the families the department works with run a wide range of situations.

For instance, she said, they’re working with older children in foster care heading off to college who are dealing with housing concerns with campuses shifting online. Johnson said they’ve worked with universities to ensure options are available.

Johnson said the department is working with child care centers to ensure they are licensed and meeting guidelines, knowing some centers may see a lot of children not normally in attendance this fall.

The department will work to support families in foster care where parents may not have the option to stay home, she said.

“Some of those families and working parents are going to need a space to place their children when they have to work,” Johnson said.

Challenges facing foster families are the same challenges members of their own department are dealing with this fall. Johnson said people who have to report to their jobs in person are concerned with what kind of educational support and child care are available without family support to fall back on.

She said parents who are working from home must find a way to meet the challenge of balancing their own workload, while ensuring their children’s learning needs are being met as well. The range of issues and concerns she’s hearing are widespread, she said.

Mental fatigue, stress and anxiety are issues the DCYF is hearing about from its own staff, as well as from families, contractors and partner providers.

“What we’re doing is creating a work environment where we’re providing support to staff, but also we’re in conversations with state HR as far as what sort of work schedules are allowed for staff to be able to manage their workload and balance family at home,” Johnson said. “Our home dynamics are much different, no matter where we are in the workforce: if you’re teleworking, if you’ve lost employment.”

As essential workers, Johnson said, many members of the agency didn’t have the option to stay home in order to continue the DCYF’s mission. She said that work is constantly ongoing, even with the “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” order in place.

Besides navigating schools restarting, many families have dealt with financial concerns since the pandemic struck, whether it means seeing hours cut back, or being furloughed or let go completely.

“What we see in these types of economic downturns, or stressful societal issues that happen, is that we see reports of abuse and neglect go up when there’s a return to normalcy,” Johnson said. “Now, we don’t know what normalcy will look like in the future.”

Johnson said a main focus moving forward is on supporting the child care market and continuing its improvement. First, she said, she wants to ensure the market is stable. Second, it needs to be accessible to families, she said, and finally, it needs to be affordable.

While the pandemic has shaken up some of the ways that DCYF operates, Johnson said the agency’s mission, work and commitment have remained steady despite the challenges the staff has faced.

“Our practice, our work has been altered in some ways, and so what we’ve had to do is adjust to the current policies, or best practices, or guidance that has been put in place,” Johnson said. “What we’ve had to do is simply adjust to the environment we’re currently in to ensure we continue to deliver the services we need to families and children.”

COVID-19 has had a significant impact on virtually every person, Johnson said.

Casey McCarthy can be reached via email at cmcarthy@columbiabasinherald.com.