Back to nursery: social bubbles impossible?

[IntheNameof]

Hi everyone! Quick question regarding reopening nurseries.
We've heard from our setting, they will the putting the children into bubbles 12 children + 2 staff, similar to reception class's.
This sounds fantastic, however I don't quite understand how it'd work with part time and full time places? E.g. child 1 attends Mon + Tues, Child 2 Mon + Wednesday and child 3 is full time. Child 3 might be in 10 different bubbles (morning and afternoon sessions possible), these might include some overlapping children, but in effect this child's bubble could be the entire preschool room? Vice versa, the child only attending a couple of days might in effect have a similarly large bubble?

Please tell me if I'm missing something? I understand that reception children will be in fixed groups?

Obviously going to email nursery as well, but it'd be good to get some insight into what other nurseries are doing.

Our preschool is not offering people their usual choice of sessions, 30 hours etc. We have enough staff and space for one group (about 15% of the total on roll), who will all do each morning as one fixed bubble. That’s it.

Yes usual hours will likely not be available

With private nurseries they may already have that staff ratio anyway?

That's interesting. Our nursery hasn't confirmed places yet just asked what we'd need.
I suppose the benefit for working parents is limitef if it's am only? But a lot bettet than nothing!!!

limited and better

You will find it will be very set hours and not much choice.

I would prefer set hours to be honest, if that minimised risks.
Just worried they'll try and maximise profits. Email mentioned that we could change our booking pattern monthly

Our nursery are fully opening on June 01 if allowed. We are all able to send our children as normal, in fact, I’ve added an extra day as we’ve lost Grandparent support. They are running a slightly shorter day of 8am - 5.30pm, instead of 7am-6.30..

Ours have said they will keep children in small groups where possible 🤷🏼‍♀️ They’ve not really given any more detail.. I assume more is to follow maybe.. but seemingly bubbles are going to be quite tricky in private nurseries. Personally, I don’t really expect nurseries to be able to socially distance that much. Happy for them to try but fully accept my daughter is likely to wander. I think increased hand washing, hygiene & cleaning is a more reasonable expectation.

I imagine it will be full days only, otherwise they would need to clean between morning/ afternoon sessions. Although staff ratios are similar to normal, a lot of nurseries will be limited by space, as each bubble will need it's own room. This means not all kids can return, DS's is only accepting kids back if both parents need to return to work away from home.

Those returning will not nessaserly get the days they would normally, bubbles will either be all full time kids, or all the same days part time, with some changing or dropping days. Parents pretty much just have to take what they can get, and try to fit work around it. Far from ideal, but better then nothing.

I’d ask your nursery OP, seems nurseries are all doing things differently. As above, mine are fully reopening on the same childcare arrangements previously in place. How they are planning to do bubbles, no idea. They only have 4 rooms .. but all the parents I’ve spoken too are just desperate to get their kids back so they can actually work & not spend the day answering to fed up bosses and trying to stop their two year old from getting injured, bored or having a tantrum from the lack of attention!

www.gov.uk/government/publications/preparing-for-the-wider-opening-of-early-years-and-childcare-settings-from-1-june/planning-guide-for-early-years-and-childcare-settings

Planning guide has just been published.

It says: Keeping group sizes to a maximum of 8 children, while adhering to EYFS ratios, is preferable so groups are as small as possible. Providers are expected to ensure that there are no more than 16 children in a group in early years settings.

And:
As far as possible, the same members of staff should be assigned to each group and these should stay the same during the day and on subsequent days. Keep your staffing arrangements as consistent as possible. In instances where you do need to use staff from other settings or agency staff, ensure that this is agreed on a weekly basis, not daily, to limit contacts.

I really don't expect them and want them to do any social distancing. The reason group sizes are key is infection control: the likelihood you will have to isolate your child increases the more children are in a bubble.

Does that guidance include reception year group?

My school nursery will be only opening for full days so the children who usually attend am or pm will have a longer day and the children attending full days will have a slightly shorter day. This is the only way to avoid lots of cleaning and swapping resources at lunchtime.

Ours have said that the “bubbles” will just be the room that the children are in i.e. Baby room bubble, tweenie bubble, toddler bubble and preschool bubble. No mixing of staff between rooms

Ours have made no mention of bubbles at all. We were invited in for a short visit, which I thought was a nice way to prepare the children to return, but at the visit I was told children could return on their usual days, so in theory they could be at full capacity, and there would be no social distancing as it's not possible. But there would be more washing of hands and staff would spend a lot of the day washing toys. The preschool room typically has around 24 children each day but a different mix of children on different days so if my son went back and the other children went back too, he would have regular contact with over 30 other children.

I almost definitely won't be sending him back next week. The reasoning for them going back doesn't seem sound enough and is mostly based on freeing parents up for work, and in our case the safety measures simply haven't been put in place. I feel like nurseries have been put in an impossible situation. It hasn't been easy working with him at home but we have made it work and got into a kind of rhythm. So for us continuing to stay at home is the most logical option for the time being.

@sunshineandskyscrapers this is exactly the point i was thinking about. If daily capacity is 25, but the majority is part time, then there could easily be 50-60 children on roll. So unless bubbles are set up intelligently, the bubble throughout the week is much bigger than for example a reception class

Ours is a small preschool but they are allocating a child to a member of staff group them. I guess in essence they will remain in bubbles according to key worker. So this way the days don't impact on the bubbles as the group of children remain the same regardless of who attends

You will need to check this with your nursery as they are all doing it differently. Where I work, we are having bubbles of 8. Different children each day, but over the week the child who attends 5 days has most contacts with 12other over the week

My friend will be working with bubbles of seven two days a week. They'll be different children in each bubble.

@IntheNameof
I was thinking about how many he might come into contact with if he attends for two days but yes the actual bubble size of children having contact with other children is around fifty by the end of the week as most are part time to a greater or lesser extent.

@twinnywinny14 as I said we've been in for a visit and they told me it won't be possible to distance the children.

@sunshineandskyscrapers my post was to the OP not to you

Our nursery is doing shorter hours to start with, 9-4 instead of 8-6 to allow for more cleaning at the beginning and end of the day.

They are also only letting children come full days or morning sessions only so no swapping between morning and afternoon groups. All the kids in the afternoons have been offered morning places or the option of all day apparently.

Dd will be going her normal 3 full days a week. She’s in the pre school room but they share a playground with the toddler room so I’m guessing the main change will be no free flow outdoor playing but set times for each room to keep their bubbles separate.