As of Monday 18th May, all schools and early learning centres across New Zealand have been given the green light to open their doors.
While kids and teachers will be returning to their normal daily routine, things won’t be quite as ‘normal’.
You see, with the change to NZ Alert Level 2, early childhood education centre’s will need to pay more attention to health and safety.
If you’re visiting your child’s kindergarten or daycare centre, you may want to place greater importance on hygiene and safety as well —in order to help your kindergarten or daycare’s efforts.
Why are Hygiene and Safety More Important in Alert Level 2?
Prior to Alert level 2, parents and visitors to child care centres could focus on general health and safety, such as:
- Having a calm and positive nature around children
- Being aware of kid’s reactions to odours and allergies
- Staying away from the centre when not well
- Keeping nails shorts and covering sores
Parents also put emphasis on making sure children were well prepared for the day ahead.
Expectations during Alert level 2 mean that visitors now have a greater impact on childcare centre hygiene and safety.
How Can Visitors Help with Hygiene and Safety?
As a visitor, which in this case means anyone who is not permanent staff or an attending child, you’re an extension of your early education centre’s bubble.
Here is a short but helpful health and safety checklist:
Make Good Use of Our Sanitisation Stations: You’ll find hand sanitizing stations upon arrival and at various places inside each Learning Links.
Shoes Off: We leave our shoes at the door for general safety and to reduce contact across surfaces.
Sign in When You Arrive: Contact tracing lets us notify visitors that could be at risk. Rest assured, your information is kept confidential.
Follow Our Online Process for New Enrolments: We’d love to help you get started. However, new preschool enrolments must complete our wellness check before taking a centre tour.
Let the Centre Know if You Aren’t Feeling Well: Stay at home when unwell (and keep children with you) until you can get checked.
How Are Learning Links Childcare Centre’s Adapting?
The good news is that we’ve made some great changes with both families and staff in mind.
Online/Morning Wellness Checks: All teachers complete a daily online wellness check before the children arrive. Children and teachers will complete a daily temperature check as well.
Contact Tracing: While preschool visitors sign-in on our centre tablet suppliers will not enter the centre.
Cleaning Schedule: Our cleaning schedule is scheduled once every three hours. Staff record completed daycare cleaning on our online system.
Worksafe Plan: You can learn all about these great changes (and more) by checking out our Learning Links COVID-19 WorkSafe plan. This plan aligns with the Ministry Early Childhood Education guidelines.
With these changes, we want our families to know that we are ready to welcome you back. The Learning Links team will do everything possible to keep our community safe.
As a visitor to the centre, we hope that by taking these precautionary measures you’ll also greatly benefit all of our tamariki, staff, and the wider community.