For many families, day care is the only option to support themselves and their children, but that opens up many other questions: How safe is child care in COVID-19 times? To help with parents' decisions on when and where to send their children back to day care, USA TODAY spoke with three pediatric health experts to get some practical tips and questions to ask themselves and their child care providers. But for many families, Wong notes, sending a child to day care is a necessity, given the high costs of private care and parents' work.