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Early Childhood Education and Care News
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June 2, 2020
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Welcome, this week how to rebuild and maintain engagement with families in your community in the wake of COVID-19. Also, are your kitchen hygiene standards up to scratch?
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Shifting the dial up on 'family engagement'
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Across the sector many early childhood services are grappling with significant changes to their operational practices and activities as COVID-19 shakes the community. Traditional routines have been upended and the definition of ‘family engagement’ has changed significantly.
This new environment of physical distancing and strict health protection strategies has meant that social events are cancelled, visitors may be banned, and families are restricted from entering the centre as freely as they once did. Staggered – and short duration – 'pick up and drop off' times curb the usual face-to-face conversations, which have always been an essential opportunity to share, deepen mutual understanding and strengthen relationships.
This 'new normal' prompts a rethink of traditional models for building family engagement. It provides an opportunity to co-create with parents a range of new structures to support and involve them with their child’s learning and wellbeing.
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Kitchen hygiene in the spotlight
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COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of maintaining good personal hygiene standards as a way of preventing the spread of the virus through hand-to-hand contact.
To this end, early childhood services have been busy reinforcing the importance and effectiveness of hand washing as a prevention tool and explaining to children why they shouldn't touch their faces.
An equally important facet of infection control in early childhood settings is kitchen cleanliness. According to the World Health Organisation the COVID-19 virus can survive for up to 72 hours on plastic and stainless steel, around 4 hours on copper and around 24 hours on cardboard, which makes kitchens a fertile environment for the virus to spread.
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Boost your occupancy
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Our Premium and Enterprise services will increase parent enquiries to your child care
business
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