Mission Statement:

We the graduate students of UCSF recognize the tremendous demands that the COVID pandemic has placed on the residents and staff of the San Francisco medical system. In response to these circumstances, we are offering help with emergency child-care, errands, and transportation.

While we wish we could help everyone in need of assistance, we will prioritize those with fewer resources, especially residents, professional students, and lower-income hospital staff. This is a rapidly evolving situation, and our capacity to help will also continue to evolve as time goes on. We ask for your patience as we coordinate our resources, and we will continue to update you on our availability.

Guidelines/Expectations:

1) You will be matched 1:1 to a student for as long as we have available students. We will do our best to address all needs and update the community on our availability as the situation progresses.

2) This resource is intended to serve as backup/emergency, not primary childcare. We hope to serve as a bridge to your anticipated longer-term childcare needs. We ask that you consider 5-10 hours/week or one shift/workday as a baseline; if you do need more, please ask and we will do our best to find an available student.

3) Compensation: Some students have offered to volunteer their time, while other students need to be compensated--both are fine and helpful to the medical community! We are balancing the growing demands on the health care system with our demands as students from diverse financial backgrounds in a high cost-of-living city. Families, if you are able to compensate students, please indicate your expected hourly rate and we will match you accordingly (for reference, the standard rate for babysitting in San Francisco is $20-30/hour). If you are not able to pay students for their time please do not let that be a deterrent for requesting services! We will do our best to match you with a volunteer. Student volunteers are strongly encouraged to limit their work to 5-10 hours per week.

4) Students are currently still enrolled in courses--while we are eager to help support our medical system, our role as learners comes first, and students are encouraged to set appropriate boundaries and expectations with families.

5) Given the nature of the student-provider relationship, it is expected that these interactions have no influence on the learning or evaluation of students involved.

6) Students are to follow the social distancing protocols recommended by the university, including avoiding hand-shaking/hugs, minimizing in-person meetings, avoiding crowded places, and maintaining a distance of 2m between themselves and others when possible.

7) Childcare can only be provided to children and by students without fever/flu-like symptoms for the safety of everyone involved.