What Happens When Essential Workers Need Child Care? Photo by FatCamera/Getty Images Many essential workers are parents, too. So as the child care crisis continues, community activists are finding creative ways to support them. Dec 22, 2020 All Brittany Mann thinks about when she’s at work is her infant daughter, Aahliyah. While Mann works 12-hour shifts as a security guard at a women’s homeless shelter in lower Manhattan, Aahliyah is at a home-based day care back in the Bronx, where they live. Sometimes, Mann needs to stay longer to cover when other guards are late or call in sick. More than half of her weekly salary goes to day care.