Center serving health care workers’ families closes

The University of Texas Health Child Development Center, which provides child care for health care workers in the Texas Medical Center, is closing permanently after temporarily shutting down during the coronavirus outbreak.

In mid-March, as businesses across Texas shut down amid the public health crisis, the center told parents they were closing as a precautionary measure. But on Wednesday, center staff told families in emails and phone calls that the center was shutting for good.

The center, used by doctors, nurses, medical residents and other employees of various TMC institutions, enrolled 125 children at time of its closing.

“That’s a good reason to close down temporarily,” said Kai Li Tan, a mother of two and biology researcher in the Texas Medical Center, “because kids don’t do social distancing, and you don’t want to risk other people being infected by COVID-19. What we are worried about is that this is a permanent closure.”

The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston confirmed the closure but did not provide a reason for it. In an email to parents, UTHealth said it will refund balances and work with parents to pay half-tuition for the days it was open in March.

“After many years of operating our licensed and accredited Child Development Center, we made a difficult decision to permanently close the facility,” UTHealth Chief

Operating Officer Kevin Dillon said in a statement.

Child care providers across Houston and Texas have closed during the coronavirus outbreak, causing parents working in all industries to worry about finding adequate care for their kids. While some are working from home, juggling the demands of the office and children, essential workers still must go to their jobs, whether in a grocery or hospital.

Last month Harris County launched a service linking essential workers to child care centers in the area as the need for medical workers skyrocketed.

“We can’t afford to have a single medical worker or grocery store clerk or essential employee benched because they have to be home taking care of their child, because they don't have access to child care,” Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said at an early April news conference.

The UTHealth Child Development Center had been open for more than 30 years and served kids from 6 weeks to 6 years old. Parents could drop off children as early as 6 a.m., a boon for many who started clinical rotations early in the morning, families said.

Doctors and other TMC workers said the permanent shutdown took them by surprise.

Oncologist Andrew Farach has been sending his daughters, 7 and 4, to the UTHealth Child Development Center for years. While his oldest now attends a Houston ISD school, his youngest was still enrolled before the pandemic began.

Farach and his wife began calling local child care providers after the email went out, hoping they could squeeze their nearly kindergarten-age daughter into a center still open as his wife, a physician who has been seeing almost all of her patients through telehealth applications, prepares to transition back to seeing them in person.

“There’s really not that many in the Inner Loop that would be close day cares to accommodate all these kids,” he said.

In March, the center’s parentteacher organization created a GoFundMe that raised $10,000 to help teachers and aides during the temporary pandemic-related closure. The fundraiser will continue in the wake of the closure, organizers said.