Dear Families,
We wanted to communicate with you around our COVID-19 risk minimisation strategy in place to support the Adeona Community. The health and safety of all families in our community, including our staff team, is of the utmost importance to us.
So far, we have:
- Control measures in place around health and safety obligations of our staff team to support their health by ensuring all sick staff stay home and no one returns to the Service without medical clearance and the associated medical documentation.
- Multiple handwashing and hand sanitising signs have been placed around the building to highlight the importance of hand hygiene
- Extra cleaning tasks as a further risk minimisation strategy are in place and are activated for every session of care.
We want to assure all of our families that we are undertaking all the right precautionary control measures to minimise the risk of infection in the Service. We need your help to maintain our high hygiene standards by sanitising your hands coming in and going out of the Service and not bringing sick or unwell children to Adeona.
In alignment with Adeona’s Illness and Exclusion Policy, we request that any child displaying signs of illness be kept at home until they are no longer symptomatic and completely well. Adeona would like to reiterate that children and staff are excluded from care for 24 hours after their last high temperature ended. Children should not be attending care if they have had paracetamol, ibuprofen or any cold and flu medication, including cough medicine in the last 24-48 hours.
We also ask all families to advise the centre of any recent overseas travel or known contact with any immediate families members returning from overseas.
As this situation is fast changing Adeona has outlined 4 levels of response in minimising the impact of COVID-19.
Level 1
- Raise awareness of the signs and symptoms of the illness
- Focus on effective hand and cough/sneeze hygiene
- Review of cleaning and sterilising policies and procedures
- Development and circulation of policy and plans regarding COVID-19
- Adherence and promotion of the Australian Governments health and travel advice
Level 2
In addition to Level 1 Adeona will:
- Develop a risk management plan for vulnerable staff
- Develop a risk management plan in conjunction with families for children with pre-existing conditions
- Self-isolation for staff and children returning from overseas travel
- Take the temperature of children and staff on arrival at the centre
- Children displaying symptoms will be given a face mask until they are collected. Staff working with symptomatic children will also wear personal protective equipment
- Medical clearance will be required to return to care after a period of illness
- Non-essential visitors will be refused entry to the service.
Level 3
In addition to Level 1 and 2 Adeona will:
- Exercise reasonable levels of social distancing
- Assess children’s programs to reduce the interactions with others to decrease chances of room to room spreading. (e.g. one group outside at a time etc.). Rosters may also be modified to reduce room to room contamination via staff.
- Assess the cessation of foodservice and request children provide their own lunch
- Exercise self-isolation for staff and children returning from travel anywhere
Level 4
Service closure for a period of time.
Adeona is now initiating a Level 2 response and appreciate all families cooperation in following these measures. If you have any concerns or need clarification with any items listed above please speak to your Centre Director.
Adeona’s Management team, are keeping well informed with the latest updates by liaising with the Department of Early Childhood Education and Care, and other government health agencies. If there is important or updated information you need to know as families, you have our assurance we will communicate this directly with you as soon as we can. For now, both the Department (ECEC) and Department of Education are working behind the scenes to determine what their next steps are. If we hear anything about mandatory closures or urgent health
alerts, we will communicate with you directly.
If you have any questions or suggestions about this matter, please don’t hesitate to speak directly with me or any members of the management team.
Once again, we want to let you know that your child’s health and safety is our highest priority and we will continue to communicate with you and bring you information as it comes.
Kind regards,
Adeona Management