Initially spared, adult daycare centers in Miami-Dade ordered closed by the weekend

Daycare centers catering to people with Alzheimer’s and other intense needs must close by the weekend under a new emergency order by Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez.

Gimenez announced the new rules late Tuesday, posting a signed order stating that all adult daycare centers in the county — including those located within cities — must close by 11:59 p.m. Friday.

Most centers are closed during the weekend, so the big change for clients’ families will come Monday. These aren’t live-in facilities, and nursing homes and assisted living centers remain open under the order.

The move will mean even more strain for families who rely on the weekday centers to care for a parent while members of the household work. While the broad shutdown of Miami-Dade’s economy leaves many at home, essential workers continue reporting to work, and daycare centers are key to keeping those schedules intact.

Elaine Ortiz, owner of Adult Day Center of South Florida in Palmetto Bay, said all of her clients have homes with family there, and that social workers will be providing house calls to help with care and mental health. “Some families are working,” Ortiz said. The pending closure order will be “very, very tough on them.”

The decision adds daycare centers to the list of facilities shuttered by Gimenez during a pandemic of a virus that is especially deadly to older people.

“This order is part of our ongoing measures to help stop the spread of COVID-19 among our most fragile residents,” Gimenez said in a statement.

Senior centers were the first category of businesses Gimenez ordered to close after declaring a state of emergency on March 12. Those centers cater to elderly residents who don’t need intense care and provide meals and activity during the day.

Their closure prompted a massive effort to replace the meals with home delivery, and the county’s Emergency Operations Center reported Tuesday night that more than 255,000 meals had been delivered.

Adult daycare centers provide more intensive services. State records show there are more than 150 countywide, with space for nearly 9,000 clients. The industry was already preparing for a closure order, said Max Rothman, president of the local Alliance for Aging, a nonprofit that provides funding for a network of service providers.

“We’ve been working through our daycares, the ones we fund, to make sure they have what they need to safely transition people to home,” Rothman said. “We were on a call last week [with county administrators and others] working through all of those issues.”

This story was originally published April 1, 2020 at 11:40 AM.