Sutherland Shire’s Ashley Stephenson cancelled her annual leave to ensure children of essential workers received the care they required.
Ashley Stephenson has been director of the Heathcote Before and After School Care centre for six years. But no amount of experience prepared her for the chaos that COVID-19 brought to the job.
The 33-year-old from the Sutherland Shire worked long hours, cancelled her own annual leave and almost single-handedly managed the centre’s staff.
Nominated in the Thanks A Million campaign for her dedication to the children and families of the Heathcote area by colleague Melanie Douglas, Ms Stephenson is the only permanent staff member, supported by a roster of casuals.
Pre-pandemic, around 25 students from the relatively small Heathcote East Primary School attended before and after school sessions. During school holidays, the vacation care program doubled their numbers.
But when lockdown was announced, the number of students dropped to just six kids of essential workers. Ms Stephenson said keeping six children in ages ranging from kindergarten to Year 6 occupied was tough while instituting strict COVID-19 restrictions.
“Keeping them entertained was difficult,” she said. “We couldn’t use the same resources we normally would because everything had to be sanitised and communal items like paper and colouring pencils couldn’t be communal anymore.
“It was also tough on the kids, who were with the same six students day in and day out, children of different ages who wouldn’t normally play together. It was very tricky.”
Ms Stephenson was originally told to close for the first school holidays during COVID-19 – April 2020 – but when the government announced free child care, Stephenson had five days to process the large number of applications that poured in.
Forced to cancel a visit to her parents, who moved to Queensland earlier in the year, she couldn’t take that holiday until Christmas.
”It was pretty chaotic,” she said. “I had to process the JobKeeper applications for all the staff, which I did with the help of Melanie, and the COVID-19 restrictions added a whole lot of work like extra cleaning and shopping because we couldn’t do online orders.”
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