 Whenever there would be any really catastrophe that was in the movies or on the air, she would say, always look for the helpers. There will always be helpers. Welcome to Values. I'm Shaquille DeLal. As part of the response to the coronavirus, we're interviewing helpers who are leaders in our local community who are trying to help the public or are seeking help from the public. I'm here right now with Matt Eldred of the TLC Learning Center. Matt, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Can you tell us a little about the TLC Learning Center? Sure. TLC Learning Center is a 65-year-old non-profit organization in Longmont serving children with special needs and typical children from birth to five and children who need therapeutic services from birth to 12. How many staff do you have working for you? We have about 45 staff, occupational, physical and speech therapists, teaching staff, assistants, and some administrative staff. How's your staff situation going with the coronavirus right now? Yeah, so it's a daily checking with staff to make sure that one, they're feeling personally okay. There are a lot of family members that are affected as well as the need for the care that we provide for the families that we serve. And what have you been doing in the past week to prepare for the coronavirus? Yeah, so obviously we work with children, so cleanliness and health and safety is always a priority, but it's been even heightened in the last couple of weeks. So we brought in extra cleaning staff to do extra nightly cleaning, daily cleaning, and then basically any staff that has available time and a wipe in their hand is wiping down tables and doorknobs. We're also taking extra precaution for children. If there are any signs or symptoms of any kinds of illnesses, we have basically doubled our exclusion time for those children. So that just isn't the coronavirus, but there are a lot of viruses and kids catch everything. So we've been extra cautious about that and sending kids home, extending sick time, but also making sure that we're there for the children and families that need the services that we provide every day. And how do you view your role in the response? What do you feel like you guys can offer the community? Yeah, so several things, you know it is really a challenging time to figure out should we stay open, should we follow the lead of school districts, public facilities, things like that. And on the other hand a lot of the services that we provide are necessary services for folks so that they can do the work that they need to do. We have first responders, nurses, nursing home workers that have their children with us. Layered on top of that, children with special needs. We know that children need consistency, routines, and anything like this can disrupt that. So we're trying to maintain consistency and routines while making sure that we're being safe at the same time. So what are your considerations for whether you stay open or closed? Yeah, so we have been meeting regularly with the Department of Health for Boulder County. We get regular communications from the Office of Early Childhood, which is the child care agency for the state of Colorado on best practices, recommendations, obviously the easy thing would be to close down and to try to avoid personal contact with other people. But at the same time there's also a need for kids to be somewhere. We want to make sure that they're in a good environment so that their parents can do the work that they need to do. And what service can you offer the public right now? Yeah, so I think the biggest service that we offer right now is that we are a place where families can come, where they can bring their child. Obviously the therapeutic services that we do for children with special needs, if those are disrupted it only magnifies some of the inconsistencies in their life so we want to try to maintain those. We've taken some precautions so we have actually started this week on some telehealth conferencing for therapeutic services and that's been really successful to be able to do some telehealth maybe keep children home but be able to continue to their therapy services virtually. That's been really good to do. Taking the lead of the school district and maybe colleges, it's hard to do online learning for infants and toddlers but we're doing the best that we can with the with the staff that we have. We are right now at about 50% attendance so we're encouraging families obviously if they can voluntarily stay home to do that. Staff as well if they need to stay home to do that. If there's any signs and symptoms of any kinds of illnesses to stay home if they're able to do that and so we're operating kind of on a skeleton crew but we're able to meet the needs right now and the demand of the families that are in our care. And for families of first responders and medical professionals there's a concern that some of those first responders may not be able to help the public because they're going to have child care responsibilities at home. Could you offer child care to those sorts of families? Right so that's been really challenging because part of the issue is how do you enroll children? How do you make sure that you're bringing in safe children? New families is typically something that we do over the course of a month. We don't have that time in this case and in fact other places are closing so it makes it even more challenging. We just met yesterday with the city of Longmont and both Longmont United and UC Health Hospitals to try to figure out how do we make sure that their employees can do the work that they need to do so we're actively working on whether it's temporary child care settings for children birth through age 10. We typically say that a child over 10 can be left home alone but there are children right now that are elementary age that are are home alone or home with older siblings and so we're working actively with the city of Longmont Boulder County Public Health and state officials on how do we best serve these families in a time of crisis so we're actively working on those right now. What can the public be doing to help you? Yeah I think the biggest thing that the public can do is to really look look to the places that are still open and provide those you know supports whatever they can do so obviously money is the easiest thing to give but it's also probably the thing that's the hardest for people to track. They want to make sure that their money is going to services and so we want to make sure at TLC Learning Center that those monies that people are donating are going directly to the services that we're providing especially for those that are either our most vulnerable populations of children or our most needy families which are needing to be at work. That not only includes first responders but it does also some of our low-income families that may be working multiple jobs some of our single parents that are working with no other support system so those are some of our also some of our vulnerable populations that I think the the public can support in giving. We just received a large donation today of food from the Conscious Alliance which is much much needed especially again for those infants and toddlers formulas and specialty foods are really challenging to find at this time so those are always appreciated. What are the guidelines for food donation if someone wanted to donate food? Yeah so it's tricky because they're being lifted so we want to still make sure that we're doing things again in a safe manner but we've been able to take food donations in a way that maybe we we've been a little more restrictive in the past so obviously things with expiration dates things that have been open those kinds of things we can't take but we've been a little bit more lenient in what we can take and then what we can also if we can't physically use it in our facilities we can give it to families who they can decide if these things that they can use or not because they are also strained with some of their own personal needs so we can pass that on to families if we can't physically use it in our facility. If someone wants to offer help what's the best way for them to reach you? Yeah so the best thing to do is to go to our website which is learningwithtlc.org they can obviously call us 303-776-7417 is our phone number and I'm sure you'll post that here as well the phone is probably the again one of the most challenging things because we have one receptionist with three phone lines and so I didn't know that there was such a thing as a busy signal still but we have actually gotten people that say your lines are busy there's something wrong and it's really just because it is jamming up some of our voicemail and there is actually a busy signal so I'd encourage people to go to the website go to our facebook page learningwithtlc and there's obviously ways that they can help there. One of the biggest things that we know not as a non-profit fundraising events are coming it's the spring season and we found out this morning our our big fundraising event is the Kentucky Derby which is Saturday May 2nd that has now been postponed to the fall so that's going to be a crunch time for us where we're not going to have that fundraising event in May and so obviously donations that can help us with the operations of the organization especially in this time where we may have to push fundraising events out those are going to be things that we'll love to you know have assistance from from the public and they can go to the website to find out more about that. Matt thank you very much for the work that you and your staff are doing stay healthy. Yeah thank you much I just encourage people be kind and check in on your neighbors and practice social distancing.