Coronavirus: London nursery group forks out £6,000 a week for Covid testing kits
Nicole Weinstein
Thursday, February 4, 2021
London’s largest nursery group is providing weekly lateral flow tests for its 700 staff, at a monthly cost of £23,584, because private and voluntary settings are not provided with home testing kits, unlike the maintained sector.
As we have reported, early years settings have been struggling to access tests, which has left many with staff shortages.
In addition, many community testing sites are not open early or late enough for nursery staff to access easily.
London Early Years Foundation (LEYF) revealed last month that since the start of 2121, 14 out of 39 LEYF nurseries have closed to allow staff to self-isolate as the new Covid-19 variant ‘spread like wildfire’ among the staff.
Since the news hit headlines, schools and local authorities have reached out to support them.
Today, LEYF’s director of operations, Mike Abbott, told Nursery World that Hammersmith and Fulham local authority had given 300 lateral flow Covid tests to Wandsworth Bridge Nursery.
And CEO June O’Sullivan tweeted that Camberwell Grove Nursery had also been donated 161 tests from Dog Kennel Hill Primary School in East Dulwich.
She tweeted, ‘Hashtag UKGovt have refused to fund testing at PVI nursery settings so @LEYFonline have self-funded £5,896 per week to test out 737 frontline staff, doing our best to keep staff and children safe. HashtagThankYou to local schools and Las who have donated tests. @BorisJohnson – not good enough.’
In another tweet, Ms O’Sullivan said, ‘Testing centres near @LEYFonline nurseries aren’t open early enough to get staff in before work so we are paying £23,584 a month to test staff. Schools have been sent boxes of tests but not PVI nurseries. We have been told to open, @MattHancock, where is the support for hashtagEarlyYears?’
Mike Abbott, operations director at LEYF told Nursery World, ‘It’s imperative we test staff on a Monday and a Thursday so we can manage staff deployment and keep the services open. We hope that other local authorities across London will follow their lead.
‘It’s absurd that private early years providers have to access Covid testing through the NHS community programme, rather than offer asymptomatic testing in each setting as schools, colleges, maintained nursery schools and primary schools with attached early years settings are able to do.
‘The Government must now act to vaccinate all nursery and childcare workers as part of their list of 13.2 million "priority" people and provide the same routine testing kits for staff given to schools.’
A spokesperson for Hammersmith & Fulham Council said, ‘We have provided more than 25,000 tests since the beginning of January. We are encouraging school teachers in primary and secondary schools to get tested, as well as nurseries.’
