By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
A new program provided by the military has eased a child care challenge for a St. Joseph resident in the Army Reserve.
Sergeant First Class Erin Lookhart says a lack of child care on the weekends created stress on his family during monthly weekend training in Kansas. Upwards, a national childcare network, offers childcare for military families and instant payments to providers during those monthly training weekends.
Lookhart says it’s made a real difference, especially for his wife who works weekends.
“Just not having to worry about does she have to take a day off work, does she have to use PTO, right? We can actually use PTO for vacation and not because she has to stay home with our kiddo,” Lookhart tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “And then, just kind of not worrying about it, not having to stress about it is a huge difference, like not having that added stress.”
Lookhart says before the Upwards program, he slapped together what he calls a piecemeal approach to take care of his three-and-a-half-year-old son.
“My brother and maybe a friend or two and we would try to coordinate schedules to where a few different people could watch him for a couple of hours on a Saturday, which as you can imagine is pretty stressful and quite the headache for everybody involved,” according to Lookhart.
Lookhart says if he couldn’t find anyone, his wife would have to take off work to watch their son.
Lookhart hopes the program continues.
“It’s been very much a game changer for my family and I think it has for other families that use it as well.”
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