On Friday 17 Dec the ECC publicly released the ECC’s statement of public health objectives in early learning during COVID-19 with support from leading New Zealand epidemiologist Dr Jin Russell. The ECC sees the safety of children as paramount and therefore encourage you all to read it so you know what to say when you have parents or teaching staff questioning whether it is safe to be operating early learning during the current pandemic. You can find the objectives here, https://www.ecc.org.nz/ Category?Action=View&Category_ id=622 (under Resources / Public Resources). A leading group of health experts have released an excellent report on keeping schools open. We have encouraged them to do a similar report for early childhood education. You can read the report here: https://cdn.auckland.ac.nz/ assets/auckland/news-andopinion/2022/01/Russell%20 et%20al%20%202022%20 Schools%20and%20 COVID-19%20Keeping%20 schools%20open%20(002).pdf The ECC’s next priority in this area is working with the Ministry of Education on supporting early learning centres to identify early learning accommodation with potential ventilation issues. ECC members-only website resources updated We have updated the following content for you to access on the ECC website: ● Emergency Response Procedures: an important update has been made to ensure armed offender-type lockdown situations are appropriately managed. It is important that all early learning centres have identified an individual who can be contacted if there is a sudden lockdown emergency (ie armed offender, not COVID-19!). When your key person changes you need to be proactive and advise your local MoE Regional Office (ie for each centre – it is not suitable to have one key contact for members with centres based across multiple areas). You can access this under Tools & Resources or under Centre Support / Policy Management). ● Vaccination policies for your staff: COVID-19 and the general ECC vaccination policy have both been updated (recent Vaccine mandate laws necessitated updates). Find under Centre Support / Policy Management. ● Individual Employment Agreements – permanent, was recently updated by Buddle Findlay. We have now updated the various other agreements: fixed 12+ months; 6-12 months; fixed under 6 months; casual. These can be found both in the alphabetical list and under ‘Managing People’. ECC Statement of Public Health Objectives in Early Learning during COVID-19 FEELING OVERWHELMED? Take 5 breaths... then name the following: 5 things that you can SEE in the room 4 things that you can FEEL/TOUCH right now 3 things that you can HEAR 2 things that you can SMELL now 1 thing that you can TASTE A perfect exercise for both adults and children alike! March 2022 { 11 }
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