COVID 19 Update May 1, 2020

BC Public Health Officer announced yesterday that it has been 100 days since they first made public their concern about the corona virus, we all know today as COVID 19. Since that time there have been over 2,000 confirmed cases in BC and over 100 deaths. BC has been under emergency order and everyone has had to respond to combat the spread of the pandemic. We are very grateful to the front line workers who put themselves at risk to offer the essential services required to deal with those affected by the virus and to keep all the essential services going.

AT LMNH, the Child Development Child Care Centre remains open to support the Tier 1 essential service workers’ children aged 30 months to 5 years, so workers can continue to serve our community. We also are providing school-aged emergency child care at our Marguerite Out-of-School Care Program. If any essential workers requires emergency child care they can go to www.westcoast.org and complete their request for referral form. LMNH still has space in both of our programs.

Although the rest of our in-person programs and services were temporarily discontinued 6 weeks ago, our staff have been busy reaching out to all our program participants, providing one to one contact, social media videos/posts, video-conferencing and creating Youtube productions. We recognize that many community members have reduced or no work as a result of orders to close businesses to protect the public. Besides providing participants with the information they require to apply for the various government benefit programs, we are also arranging food support to those facing food insecurity at this time. With the support of funding from Community Food Centres Canada, HelpAge Canada and the Community Response Grant, (United Way, VanCity and Vancouver Foundation), we are helping hundreds of individuals.

There have been signs in the past few weeks to be cautiously optimistic that we are making progress in flattening the curve. LMNH, like the province of BC are planning for the reopening of some of our programs in the future, depending on how things unfold in the weeks and months to come. We will be reaching out to our various stakeholders soon to share ideas and plans.

In the meantime, continue to be safe and stay healthy.

Joel Bronstein, Executive Director