Nursery World - Coronavirus: DfE updates early years guidance in response to PM 'roadmap'

Wraparound childcare, including care provided by childminders, can restart from 8 March, as part of the gradual easing of lockdown restrictions announced yesterday.

The DfE guidance now recommends that early years staff and adult visitors wear face coverings when they cannot socially distance

In the roadmap, that Prime Minister Boris Johnson described in the House of Commons as ‘cautious but irreversible’ and a ‘one way to freedom’, he also outlined that parent and child groups will be permitted to take place outdoors from 29 March.

There will be a limit of 15 attendees but children under the age of five-years-old do not count towards this limit. It is aimed that these groups will then be allowed to start operating indoors from 12 April at the earliest.

While the Prime Minister stated that the first phase of the Covid vaccination rollout, focused on protecting the nine groups deemed to be most vulnerable to serious illness or death, by 15 April, he did not provide information on how the second phase will be prioritised. Early years organisations continue to call for early years workers to be given vaccinations as an urgent priority.

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