‘We want children to be safe and not
THE most important thing for childcare providers to ensure is that the children in their care are happy says Kathy Scanlon who is the manager of Cumann Iosaef Pre-school and After-school service in Tralee.
“We want them to be safe and happy at the centre. We don’t want them to worry.”
She fears that banning parents from entering may cause difficulties in helping children to settle in, especially those who will be new in September.
“We will try our best so the children won’t notice that parents can’t come in. Staff and parent interaction will also be lessened which may make it difficult for children to settle in. They will want to know why Mom is not left in,” she said.
Though Kathy welcomes the guidelines and understands how important it is to find a way forward, she foresees some problems with them not least the fractured nature of child-care in general which will lead to difficulties forming pods.
“The pods themselves are fine but most childcare services take children for varied hours, a full day, a half day, a couple of hours, pre-school hours. How are we supposed to operate a pod and be viable in this situation?. We will have a morning pod, afternoon pod with different numbers and a full-day pod with others and they can’t over-lap at all.”
Space in many centres to have these pods and ensure they don’t overlap will also be a key concern, though less so for the summer months.
Kathy and other providers fear that they now won’t be able to meet the needs of the parents as they did previously.
“Parents want the same hours but I am not sure that is possible.”
This worry is also expressed by Bernie Stepney of Stepping
Stones in Ballinorig where many of the children are those of frontline workers due to its proximity to the hospital. They would normally have around 95 children in their care and to date will have 45 returning to her when they open in a few weeks, according to a survey she conducted which means the service is already half full and will not even be fully open until September.
“Parents may have to share spaces in order for us to help as many parents as possible. Many already have contingency plans in place so may not need us all the time,” she said.