Building a picture - Confidence of the sector to reopen childcare in June (England)

18th May 2020 Leadership & Management All Posts

Building a picture – Confidence of the sector to reopen childcare in June (England)

Following the Governments announcement last week, we sent a survey to build a picture on how confident the Early Years Sector is to reopen on June 1st.

We asked on a scale of 0-10 – ‘How confident are you in’:

safely opening your setting to all on June 1st?
managing your staff to reopen?
bringing staff back from furlough?
managing staff ratios?
managing the physical and mental wellbeing of staff?
looking after the children in line with the updated Government guidance?

The results are in...

We’ve collated all 634 of the responses from childcare providers across the country and the latest results show:

In summary, the results show common concern for the safety and wellbeing of the staff and children. The figures show:

Safety:

Only 13% of childcare providers are confident to safely open their setting to all on June 1st, with an average confidence rating of 4.5/10 showing that there is definitely some concern for safety within the sector.

Staffing:

27% of the childcare providers we surveyed do not feel confident managing their staff and 61% are not confident or unsure about bringing their staff back from furlough. In addition, only 19% are confident that they can manage staff ratios.

The wellbeing of Staff:

60% are not confident or are unsure about managing the physical and mental wellbeing of staff with a June reopening.

The wellbeing of Children:

39% are fairly confident or confident about looking after the children in line with the updated Government guidance.

We really appreciate everyone taking the time to complete the survey.

You can view the full results here:

Join the Connecting Childcare Webinar

To ensure we are supporting you with all of your concerns and challenges, we are hosting a customer-led webinar on Thursday 21st May at 2pm to share insights and best practice.

Connecting Childcare – See how other providers across the UK are planning a return to childcare and what procedures they are adopting to return on the 1st June.

The panellists, Cary Rankin from Bertram Nursery Group, David Wright from Paint Pots Preschool & Nursery Group have been invited to join a discussion with Chris Reid, CEO of Connect Childcare.

There will be an open discussion around the practicalities of reopening and everything which should be considered, such as:

Managing the emotional and physical wellbeing of staff and children during the transition
A realistic approach to pedagogy
Parental Communication post lockdown
Managing staff rotas, occupancy and ratios

#StrongerTogether

Hope to see you there – Thursday 21st May @ 2pm