Good evening,

We hope that this message finds you all well and healthy. We are contacting you in response to the latest government news on the gradual lifting of the lockdown and in particular, how it affects the childcare sector and Snapdragons.

The Government have indicated that early years settings will be able to open from 1st June for more children. We will have to adhere to safety guidelines and we will do everything possible to minimise risk for both staff and children. A full risk assessment will be completed and shared with you, prior to 1st June.

We know that many of you will be returning to work, if you have not done so already, and have questions regarding availability of childcare spaces. In order for us to try and plan ahead, initially over the next few months but also in the longer term, we are asking you to complete an online survey to help us build a picture of what measures we could potentially take.

One thing is clear, we may not be running at our normal capacity for a long while to come. We also do not yet know whether there will be restrictions on the number or ages of children who can attend. We do however, remain committed to providing a safe environment for both children and staff, whilst preserving as many staff jobs as possible.

We have been safely operating five nurseries for keyworker children and will be able to build on that success in the coming months. We will explore all options, including a holding retainer if you would like to keep your child’s space open but are not ready to return your child to nursery yet.

We cannot commit to an amount until we have evaluated demand but hope to include more on this next time we are in touch. For nurseries that operate wrap-around care i.e. breakfast, after school and holiday club, we will need to seek further guidance in respect of introducing different groups of children into a setting.

We know that many of you have questions and as soon as we have collated results from our workforce survey and our parent survey, we will be back in touch to try and answer some of these for you. This is our absolute priority and we hope to be back in touch very soon with some answers.

When completing the survey, please ensure that only one parent from each household fills it in to avoid duplicate responses. The closing date for this survey is this Thursday, so please complete them before then to help us plan ahead.

For further information, you can refer to the dedicated page on the Gov.uk website at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/closure-of-educational-settings-information-for-parents-and-carers/reopening-schools-and-other-educational-settings-from-1-june

Thank you,

Rose, Paul, James and Jennifer