June 1st re-opening
Hello everyone,
We are pleased to announce that the Government expects us to be able to welcome children back to nursery from 1st June. This is subject to Government confirmation by 28th May. We are so very excited to welcome back both our team and the nursery families.
The Department for Education has published detailed guidance which enables nurseries to care for children safely and minimise the risk of transmission of the coronavirus. Unlike many schools, nursery layouts are generally designed to facilitate small groups of children which will help us to create distance between groups of children.
We have been open at several sites throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and so already have some ideas of what safety measures we can implement but, as we will be welcoming more children back, we will need to develop these further.
Our Safe Operating Procedures and full risk assessments will be available to you before reopening and these will be regularly reviewed and updated. We are unable to share our Safe Operating Procedures yet, as we continue to receive updates and guidance from Local Authorities and/or the DfE daily, so these are still working documents. We are also looking at every single parent suggestion if it has not been considered already. Thank you for taking the time to share these with us, we greatly appreciate it.
We are grateful to you for completing the return to nursery survey recently. This has helped us to get a clearer idea of how many of you would like to bring back your children in June. With under three weeks to go, we would now invite you to complete a booking form, formally advising us of your intentions. We would ask you to complete this by midnight on Tuesday 19th May. This will allow us enough time to plan out our staffing needs and ensure that they are all up to date with our new policies.
Please bear in mind that this form is for sessions in June only. You will able to reduce your normal booking pattern by around 25%, if you wish, in order to ease children back in. In July, your booking patterns will revert to normal. If you wish to permanently change this, please email your nursery with the normal one month’s notice. The booking pattern that you indicate on this form will stand for the whole of June.
On the booking form, there will also be an option to not attend, but instead pay a 30% retainer for the month of June. This will be based on your previous booking pattern. If a booking form is not completed, then it will be assumed your child is not returning and in this instance we will waive the notice period. From 1st June, normal notice periods of one month will apply. All families who do not return a form will be contacted during June to confirm that they did receive the form.
We understand that several parents have said it is too early to decide, which is why we have introduced the option of a retainer. We absolutely understand and we want to support you in feeling flexible to make a decision.
If you do not complete the booking form to attend in June but then change your mind after Wednesday 20th May and would like your children to attend, we will accommodate this where possible, but it will then be subject to availability and staffing. As we intend to make our staffing decisions very quickly, this availability may be very limited.
We understand that there are many questions. We have added a list of FAQs that may help with some of these to our website and will let you know when our Safe Operating Procedures are released later in the month.
Thank you for your support during this time. We look forward to welcoming you all back and providing a safe, creative and nurturing environment to all your children.
Update 18/05/2020: Our Safe Operating Procedures are now available to read here.
