Will there be Keyworker care?

[Amonite]

If a school bubble or bubbles close is there still keyworker care as there was in the summer term?
Our children went to school throughout as we both have frontline keyworker roles. We are in a local lockdown area, if the children are sent home for 2 weeks surely keyworker children are exempt and can still attend?
We have no childcare options

staffing will be a huge problem if no one is willing to help/support.

Well no, why would you think there would be?

@Pomegranatepompom

staffing will be a huge problem if no one is willing to help/support.

What do you suggest?

If people want beds open/ itu staff - there will need to be some childcare provision if both parents are frontline.
DBS checked nursery workers/nannies/ child minders. Where would be dependent on current lockdown measures. ? Nurseries
Of course would need money and planning (which should already of happened), so likely there won’t be anything. It will be shameful if people can’t work when they want to sue to lack of testing etc
The lack of staff won’t be because of people being unwilling. People were volunteering for quite frankly awful situations from April onwards.

@Pomegranatepompom but the whole point of sending children home is because they need to isolate at home away from the outside world because they have the potential to be infectious they cant be going to another child care provision it defeats the purpose of the intial reason to isolate

Sorry I think I’ve gone off point - I didn’t mean children who need to isolate - I was thinking more if schools close.

For example whole year groups are being sent home - however some schools have a sensible plan in place and are isolating based on seating/ contact.

Teacher here, was trying to point this out to people I know 4 months ago.
One of the main reasons why bubble size actually matters.

however some schools have a sensible plan in place and are isolating based on seating/ contact

The ones who are isolating whole year groups are following the precise guidance from Public Health England- those decisions are as a result of long and detailed telephone conversations with them.

Don’t say “some schools are sensible” as though the rest of us are just closing for a laugh.

Well it true to say some schools are being proactive about staying open.
But I can’t get into a school debate - it’s tiresome.

Why on earth would you think this would happen? The point is that they may be contagious so how would a teacher look after them?
I have sympathy for the “real” key workers like doctors, teachers, food retail etc. I have zero sympathy for the many parents at our school who exaggerated their status somewhat or who have an SAHM - they will have to learn how difficult it is to juggle homeschooling and work...

Some of my team, moved their children out to relatives so they could continue to work. It’s pretty hard going for weeks and a lot to ask of people. People did all they could to continue to work.

napody How can that possibly be true. One teacher tests positive. 18 children self isolate. Some of their parents need to look after them. Maybe 5 or 6. 23 people impacted.

@Pomegranatepompom

Some of my team, moved their children out to relatives so they could continue to work. It’s pretty hard going for weeks and a lot to ask of people. People did all they could to continue to work.

I'm in area of lockdown where you can't mix households though. Grandparents can't babysit or visit (and vice versa).

It's obviously a problem, but if teachers (or childminders) are looking after children with maybe mild symptoms who haven't yet been tested, then they will get ill, and the system will fall apart.

Children who need childcare are likely to be in primary school, though and if they are told to isolate it's likely to be children in their class who have tested positive, which does increase the chance of infection.

I am also really worried about some of our vulnerable children at school- 2 weeks off not able to leave the house would be a genuine disaster for some of them.

To me, there are only two possible solutions:

1. get the infection rate under control, e.g. by closing things like pubs etc

OR

2. Part time school with much smaller bubbles, and key worker bubbles where students are hopefully less vulnerable to getting ill- and teachers not mixing between bubbles, too. This won't completely eliminate the problem but it will reduce the number of students sent home each time drastically.

The current plan clearly isn't working for a lot of parents- which people have been pointing out for quite a while now!

It's all very well saying send kids back to school sooner, but if this goes wrong and lots of teachers get ill, you could have full school closures happening very suddenly.

Tbh reading the unsupportive supplies on here, if we need to isolate/care for DC - that’s our only option. I’m sure all the people saying - no there shouldn’t be provision, won’t complain about the lack of staffing ...

Treesofwood: should've explained the meme- it was a special school so 48 children and staff exposed, all children would need care, and then it was back in May so were quarentining whole families rather than just the children/staff. Which seemed a sensible precaution at the time (maybe in retrospect still will)
Or I couldve just cut the meme out as I was sharing for my comment in May: 'which means children of key workers will no longer have care either'. Something which has been massively overlooked, especially when blithely bubbling hundreds of people together. The government could have set bubble size but that would have involved taking some responsibility for the organisation of this, rather than passing the buck entirely to schools, who dont have an epidemiologist on staff to help them assess the impact of bubble size decisions.

I agree with PP that bubble size matters. The larger the bubble, the more likely a child will have to isolate at home at some point. Distancing is required for students between bubbles but not necessarily within bubbles so that’s why.

I think lots of people will be faced with difficult decisions if their child’s bubble is sent home e.g. leaving a year 7 at home alone all day when they don’t feel their child is ready for it, asking grandparents in non lockdown areas for childcare etc. It’s rubbish but that’s what we’ve got as these children and staff should be isolating if they have been in close contact with a positive case to stop the train of transmission. Shared toilets, lunch spaces, break times, large class sizes etc mean that many students within the bubble could be classed as close contact.

We probably need to break keyworker children off into a separate bubble now and I say this as DH and I will be working frontline.

That would require 2 x as many teachers though?
Unless you mean to rejig classes within a school year (we have 3 form entry in our primary) in which case if a KW’s child gets it then the whole KW bubble is burst!

Surely during the previous term when only KW children were in school if the child had needed to isolate or that keyworker bubble in school had "burst" then they wouldn't have been able to access childcare provision then either??

It's interesting to see the difference in how schools approach the bubbles bursting. A pupil in a class I teach has tested positive. Out of 28 only 20 have been sent home to isolate due to seating plans showing who has been in contact with the child. I had a very small class yesterday ! It sounds like other schools would have sent the whole class or even year bubble home to isolate.

@felineflutter how would that work at secondary schools though when children have so many different options. We couldn't staff separate bubbles for keyworker children. I would imagine similar problems at primary.

Subject options.

Concerned777 that is very true. They didnt have them in groups of 30 last term though, did they? Obviously groups of 15 halves the chance...

Flumposie I think that's an issue.... the govt and others are now acting as if bubbles were never 'units of isolation'.... what exactly were they then? And if the other 8 were in the room with the infected child surely room size, ventilation, number of hours together all make a difference- do some schools have an otherwise unreleased formula for calculating all this or are we all just winging it and being told whatever we do is wrong by Govt? Think it's the latter.