新冠疫情下兒童照顧支援政策之檢討──以防疫照顧假與防疫補貼為中心

A Review of the Child Care Supporting Policy under the Covid-19 Pandemic: Focused on Unpaid Family Care Leave and Epidemic Compensation

2021年，隨著嚴重特殊傳染性肺炎（COVID-19）疫情在臺灣大規模爆發，中央及各地方政府陸續施行停止到校上課或育兒服務的相關措施，希望遏止疫情的傳播速度。但學生與兒童回家防疫、家長或其他照顧者卻需要繼續上班的現實，卻使兒童照顧的需求浮上檯面。為此，臺灣也隨各國的腳步，推出了包含防疫照顧假在內的兒童照顧支援政策，希望讓兒童的主要照顧者能夠有瑕兼顧工作與家庭照顧。
但這些政策的設計應如何選擇？具體如何運作？照顧者或雇主有無工資或其他補貼？法律依據為何？與法治國原則的關係如何？本文擬在後疫情時代的進行盤點考察，並試圖提出評析與建議。就此，本文提出兩個建議，第一，應以法律明文方式制定防疫照顧假的適用範圍、條件與內容；第二，就工作中斷導致的工資損失，應由國家直接或間接透過雇主的方式給予勞工。本文並希望以此次新冠肺炎緊急措施所引起的諸多法律課題為契機，探討兒童照顧困難、支持政策、法治國原則以及損失如何負擔等課題，以作為學界日後持續精進防疫法制、設計緊急措施的參考。

Due to COVID-19 outbreak in 2021, both Taiwan’s central and local governments have stopped in-school classes or childcare services, hoping to curb the spreading speed of the epidemic. However, the reality that students and children were at home for epidemic prevention, and their parents or caregivers needed to work outside, has brought the childcare issue to the forefront. To this end, Taiwan followed other countries’child-care policies, including unpaid Family Care Leave, hoping to allow children’s primary caregivers to successfully balance their work and family care. But how to design these policies? How did these policies work? Did them provide any wages or other subsidies to the caregivers or employers? What is the legal basis of those polices? How does it relate to the principle of the rule of law? This article intends to research and answer above questions. In the end, this article provides the two suggestions: first, the law should draw up the clear scope of the Family Care Leave; second, the government should provide workers’losing wages directly or via the employer. This article hopes to solve many legal issues within the COVID-19 pandemic, such as childcare difficulties, policies, principles of the rule of law, and how to deal with damages to provide academic resource to improve the legal approaches and to design emergency measures for epidemic prevention.