The government’s ‘Actions for Early Years and Childcare Providers’ sets out aspirations for the early years sector to open for all children from the 1st June 2020.

Over the last few months some Early Years settings and childminders have remained open to support small numbers of children of key workers and vulnerable children.

The current position is that some early years settings and childminders have re-opened during the week beginning the 1st June, others are preparing to re-open and a small number are not planning to re-open currently.

The early years settings and childminders that have remained open or have re-opened are required to follow social distancing guidelines, and this has limited their capacity in relation to the number of children they can care for. This is to ensure children, staff and families are safe and well cared for and the risk of transmission and infection is reduced.

Settings are also working to keep small groups of children within ‘bubbles’, and to keep the ‘bubbles’ separate from each other to minimise the risk of transmission.  This presents a challenge for parents requiring wrap around care as this could result in mixing children from different ‘bubbles’ and increasing risk of transmission and infection.

The School Readiness and Childcare Team are carefully monitoring demand and availability within school cluster areas/localities and are supporting families to find local early years and childcare provision for their children. As more parents return to work and demand for childcare increases we anticipate that we may face challenges in meeting demand. We will be working with our providers to find solutions to ensure that we can meet local demand.