Childcare workers are currently eleventh in the Government’s fifteen-phase rollout plan. Reclassifying childcare workers as key workers would place them in the sixth phase of the rollout, those “providing services essential to the vaccination programme”.
Seas Suas says that vaccinating sector staff sooner will protect them, and mean fewer absences and interruptions to care and education.
The group says that the childcare sector is crucial to Ireland’s “economic and social recovery” and supports a fully functioning healthcare sector. Without childcare, the country cannot return to full productivity at work, the representative body said.
“Last March, when early learning and childcare services were closed, parents, many of them frontline workers, quickly came to appreciate the difficulties of functioning as full-time carers and teachers while simultaneously carrying out their professional duties,” said Regina Bushell, chair of Seas Suas.
Call for immediate decision on childcare reopening
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In a letter to Minister O’Gorman last night (Tuesday), Seas Suas has sought clarity on three core and fundamental questions by this Friday, 22 January.
The representative organisation said that the sector is an essential service and despite lockdowns, providers continue to operate safely and provide education and care to children.
Seas Suas Chair: “The clock is ticking and with every day that passes, we lose more time that could be spent planning and ensuring we can continue to provide services beyond 31 January, 8 working days from now. We risk service provision with a last minute to midnight decision.”
Waterford, Ireland / WLR
Jan 20, 2021 10:36 AM
With Ireland’s lockdown restrictions up for review on January 31st, the representative body for independent early years’ service providers, Seas Suas, has called on the Government to provide clarity and take an immediate decision on the reopening of childcare.
It labelled Government’s current approach as ‘short termism’.
Seas Suas suggest that decision makers should utilise data and predictive modelling to establish the likely scenario with regard Covid-19 on January 31st.
This would help to ‘inform decision making now’ and a’void waiting for the last minute to take decisions’.
Seaus Suas said providers require time to plan and parents need time to make alternative childcare arrangements, if necessary.