Meet an emergency ECE provider: Dottie Williams

“My families and my community needed me to stay open. I never thought about shutting down,” says Dorothy (Dottie) Williams, of her decision to remain open through the COVID-19 crisis as one of the state’s 500 emergency early education and child care providers.

An emergency order by the Baker administration suspended the operation of all public and private schools and non-emergency child care programs through May 4. The only early care and education (ECE) programs now permitted to operate are those serving the children of families designated as ‘COVID-19 Essential Workforces,’ with parents or caregivers who work in health care, public safety, or public health and vulnerable children whose families are involved with the state’s Department of Children and Families or whose families who qualified for subsidized care.

Williams, the proprietor of Dottie’s Family Childcare in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, was uniquely poised to operate as an emergency provider. Over the 13 years she has been in business, she’s routinely cared for vulnerable children, including those who have experienced homelessness. As a member of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Family Child Care Network, a referral program for Dana Farber employees seeking a high quality, licensed, home-based child care provider, she also has experience caring for children whose parents and caregivers work in health care.

“My families and my community needed me to stay open. I never thought about shutting down,” says Dorothy (Dottie) Williams, proprietor of Dottie’s Family Childcare in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood.

Williams and her staff are committed to serving children with complex needs. “No child is a cookie,” she says. “No child has just one layer to them.”

Providers must be patient and kind to develop trust with a child who has experienced or is currently experiencing trauma, as many children are throughout the pandemic. “What we try to do is make sure that we give them everything we can, with love and kindness,” Williams says. “You just have to persevere.”

Williams, who is a Leadership Fellow in the Institute of Early Education Leadership and Innovation at UMass Boston’s Post-Master’s Certificate program, says she hopes that the public health emergency brings more respect to the ECE field in two ways. First, she would like to see policymakers and leadership within the field give the same regard to family child care as that given to larger programs.

“Family child care has as much right to be at the table as centers, [large chains] and private schools, and we should not be considered the low man on the totem pole any longer,” says Williams, who praised the state’s new commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care, Samantha Aigner-Treworgy, for opening up opportunities for family child care providers to have a greater voice in plotting the direction of early education and care in the Commonwealth.

Second, Williams says she hopes the greater public will come to see the value of ECE programs. “On a very practical level, if we don’t go to work, then parents can’t go to work. I really hope that when this is over, everyone remembers how important child care providers and educators were to keeping the health care system and other essential parts of our economy going,” Williams says.

“Going forward, we need to remember that the ECE system works really well with support from the state and the government. If that system succeeds, then our communities, our families, and our children succeed,” Williams says. “The window of opportunity for us to really truly nurture our children and develop that social and emotional building to make them feel as though they're worthy is from birth to five. All of our children need this and we can’t afford to keep leaving so many children behind.”