How my nursery is responding to the coronavirus threat

Our nursery is located in a small seaside town in East Sussex which, until a week or so ago, was a long way from the outbreaks of coronavirus. However, this changed when news of outbreaks of the infection were reported in Brighton & Hove, an area where many of our parents and carers work and visit. Suddenly we had to consider our policies and procedures and think about what might need updating.

It’s been an interesting process, which continues to require change and consideration. As a nursery owner I thought it worth sharing.

Let me first underline that I don’t have any professional medical expertise. Despite this, like all nurseries, we deal with common infectious childhood diseases on a regular basis. We have robust policies and procedures in place to minimise the risk of infection between staff, children and their families.

However, one aspect of the coronavirus that is very different to the usual illnesses we have to manage is the requirement for ‘self-isolation’ if there is any suspicion of contact with a confirmed case. I gave careful consideration to how I would manage this for my staff, the families and their children. Questions I considered:

• What was the position on employment law if a member of staff needed to self-isolate?
• How did I feel about charging families for nursery places they had booked if they needed to isolate a child, who didn’t contract the virus? Were they self-isolating at their cost, for the benefit of everyone else?
• What should I do if several staff needed to self-isolate, could I still open? Would I have enough staff?

All very important points, about which I had little expertise.

Sources of information

My first port of call were the experts: Public Health England, my local NHS Trust and ACAS for the employment law facts. Very quickly I established the following:

• Public Health England has detailed advice for settings and fact sheets that can be issued to staff and parents.
• ACAS did not have guidelines about this particular employment situation but it was clear that if you were showing any symptoms you should, of course, be paid according to the company sickness policy. If you were well, but at home, then possibilities for ‘home working’ should be discussed.
• Professional membership bodies signposted to Public Health England, but had no specific advice for nursery owners and managers.

Although the advice from Public Health England explained how we should deal with things medically, there was little advice for nursery leaders about how to manage and deal with all the operational considerations. It was clear that I needed to make my own decisions and create clear operational guidance for staff and families.

Information for parents and carers

I first sent a letter to parents using Tapestry, our online journal, and also uploaded the advice leaflets I’d found on Public Health England. It covered the following points:

• Information on the main symptons of Coronavirus.
• Parents and carers (and all adults) arriving at the nursery need to use the antibacterial hand gel.
• Parents or carers should not come to the nursery to drop off, or collect, their child if they are unwell. If someone else is sent to collect a child the parent or carer must let the nursery know and use the child’s password. This is a requirement of our safeguarding policy.
• A parent or carer should not send a child to nursery if they are unwell.
• If a child is unwell at nursery we would contact the parent or carer to pick them up.

It also provided clear information about the nursery’s process if parents or carers needed to self-isolate a child in relation to payment of sessions. The main points covered:

• If a child remains well throughout the self-isolation period we would make arrangements with parents and carers to try to facilitate extra sessions for their child to attempt to make up the time lost.
• We require a letter from a medical professional confirming that parents or carers needed to self-isolate their child and that the child remained well throughout the period of time. This means that they would have been able to attend their usual sessions had they not been in isolation.
• If a child is unwell during the period parents and carers would not be eligible for additional flexible sessions as the child would not have been able to attend the sessions they’d missed due to ill health.

The final point I made in the letter regarded what would happen if staff or children had to self-isolate due to the virus. Guidelines from Public Health England about how a deep clean should be undertaken meant the nursery would be closed temporarily.

Using Tapestry, I was able to track how many parents and carers had downloaded the letter (virtually everyone). This helped me to identify those I needed to speak to directly.

Information for staff

I also sent a letter to staff providing information about the measures we would take to cope with an outbreak and the implications for them with regard to self-isolation, covering:

• Staff needed to be extra vigilant with their own personal hygiene and for the hygiene practices of children in their group.
• We would complete a deep clean during half term week of all toys. A proportion would be stored so we could have clean toys ready if some had to be removed due to an outbreak of the infection, ensuring a constant availability of resources to provide learning experiences for children.
• If a member of staff remained well throughout a self-isolation period they would be allowed to use any annual leave to cover the time, take the time as as unpaid and have first ‘call’ on any overtime when they returned, or we would work with them to enable ‘home working’ on observations or planning. This in itself had implications for another policy as we don’t generally allow any homeworking for staff other than the management team. We decided we would take this on a case by case basis, in consultation with the staff member(s) affected.
• We required a letter from a medical professional confirming not only that the member of staff needed to self-isolate but that they remained well throughout the period of time. In other words the member of staff would have been able to work their usual shifts had they not been required to self-isolate.
• If a member of staff was unwell during the period we would apply our usual sickness policy.

Coping with a changing situation

What is encouraging is that I was able to produce guidance, review our operational plan, consider which other policies were potentially affected and update our risk assessment quickly. However, the situation, and the advice, is changing rapidly and I would urge all nursery owners to regularly review their policies and be prepared.

Rebecca Swindells is the owner and co-manager of Blue Door Nursery. She is also an education advisor to Tapestry and has written frequently for the Foundation Stage Forum.