Montevideo, Uruguay, 7 September 2023
Marcela Hernández, 27, is a user of the Jardín de los Colores service, part of the Uruguayan Care System. She takes her three children there in the afternoons, allowing her to attend high school classes. "I want to be a doctor," she says.
Marcela Hernández is 27 years old and has three children who are seven, three, and one and a half years old. She is a beneficiary of the Jardín de los Colores (Garden of Colors) service provided by the Uruguayan Care System. When she became a mother for the first time, she had been working in a bakery for a year. When her child was born, she decided to focus on being a new mother, so she left her job. It was an experience she does not want to repeat. "I realized that when you don't know anything, they treat you badly," she says. She had left high school in her fourth year. So she found another job (where she currently works as an administrator in a public agency) and decided to go back to school. That was when her second child was born. "I've been trying to finish high school for years," she says. But now she only has one final semester to go and plans to enter medical school next year. "I want to be a doctor," she says. "I like to help people. And besides that, I want my children to have a quality of life that I can't give them now."
El Cerro de Montevideo is a traditionally working-class neighborhood. Marcela lives there with her husband, daughter, and grandson. She gets up before seven in the morning. On her way to work with her husband, she leaves the two oldest children at school and the youngest stays home with her husband's daughter. Marcela gets back after two in the afternoon, runs errands, and does housework and school work. "The afternoon goes quickly," she says. At six o'clock she takes all three children to Jardín de los Colores and goes to high school until ten at night.
The children are enrolled in the program thanks to Uruguay's Care System, created in 2015. Wilson Benia, advisor on Health Systems and Services at PAHO's office in the country describes it as "an innovation in public policy focused on caring for people." In particular, it focuses on "certain groups with particular vulnerability: early childhood, people with disabilities, and the elderly."
"The Care System generates support that enables development, particularly of women, who are most burdened by family care, due to gender stereotypes," Benia says, stressing that the objective is for "people to be able to deploy all their abilities."
The policy is designed to "enhance the contributions of families, companies, and the State in a framework of co-responsibility and shared financial coverage, based on the characteristics of vulnerability of the target population."
Support is given by covering the wages of those who care for people with disabilities or older adults, and through publicly subsidized care, for example, in early childhood centers such as Jardín de los Colores..
When Marcela went back to school, her mother took care of her children. Her husband also took care of them on days when he was not working. Evening care for the children was a very helpful change for her. "It was a relief because I used to depend on other people one hundred percent," she says, adding that this way she does not have to miss a class when her mother is working or not feeling well.
"It's a great help and I'm happy with it. Not only because the children are taken care of: they're delighted to go," she says. "The Jardín is always checking whether we're going to need the service next year, next semester, and how we are doing," says Marcela.
After leaving her job at the bakery, Marcela wanted to get a job that would "allow her to be a mother." She would like to have more quality time with her children, but she is aware that it is difficult to achieve this while working and studying. Still, little by little, she is making progress toward her short- and long-term goals.
