Nursery chief reveals why they stayed open despite 9 children testing positive for COVID-19

Over the last week and a half, a nursery in Milton Keynes has been in the media spotlight after 23 staff, children and family members tested positive for COVID-19.

Westcroft Nursery which is one of nine run by Acorn Early Years Foundation took the decision, after advice from Public Health England, to remain open to bubbles of children 'not exposed to confirmed cases'.

All staff and families at the nursery were offered testing for the virus and those who tested positive were asked to self-isolate for 14 days.

Zoe Raven, chief executive of Acorn Early Years Foundation spoke to daynurseries.co.uk about how her team responded quickly by using a clear process and communication strategy which helped them get through the ordeal. Ms Raven wants to advise other nurseries how to cope if an outbreak occurs and urges not to be ‘judgemental’ and to ‘support each other.’

On 11 June, a staff member from was suffering with what she thought was hay fever. Thinking she would be negative after taking a COVID-19 test, the nursery were surprised when the test came back positive and all children from her ‘bubble’ were sent home to isolate for 14 days.

The nursery operates with four ‘bubbles’ with between 8 and 16 children in each. These ‘bubbles’ work as a protective measure to help reduce potential transmission by keeping the same children and employees together at all time. There is no cross over into other ‘bubbles.’

’We knew we did the right thing with our processes in place’

Ms Raven said: “When we sent the immediate message out to the affected bubble, we then picked up the phone and spoke to every single family because we wanted to give them the opportunity to ask questions and find out what their concerns were and any questions.

“Just as well we contacted all the other nursery parents too, as on the Saturday we had a phone call from a parent to say their child was poorly.”

After contacting all the parents from the second bubble telling their children to isolate for 14 days Acorn’s team rang Public Health England (PHE) as they were worried about the rising cases.

“They made us feel very reassured that everything we had in place was correct and the hygiene procedure was fine. They asked us lots of questions and were very supportive.”

PHE extended the testing to all staff and children at the nursery. Ms Raven said: “Everyone was invited to go and get tested. The testing procedure is a very time consuming exercise because you are given a choice of testing options but they also couldn’t collate the test results that were linked to us.”

This meant the nursery had to follow up where parents and children had their tests done so PHE could match the results to the nursery. This took two days of work.

Ms Raven said: “When the test results came back in, it quickly went up to nine cases across the nursery.”

The final tally of positive tests was nine children, four members of staff and 10 family members. A few test results have yet to be received.

“Fortunately, everybody that was tested either had fairly mild symptoms or were asymptomatic, no-one had to go to hospital, so we were very lucky with that," she says.

Ms Raven says her staff and management team “have been brilliant” throughout the last two weeks by being supportive and helping with phone calls to parents during the weekend.

“We couldn’t have done it as a single site nursery taking on all the burden of data collection for PHE. We wouldn’t have had the resources to do it in that timescale. It is a full-time job trying to keep the contact with the parents.”

Only two ‘bubbles’ were affected with multiple cases, and a third bubble had just one case. The nursery welcomed back the first ‘bubble’ of children last week from their period of self-isolation, and the second bubble on Monday. The remaining children and staff will return next week.

PHE have completed all testing at Acorn Nursery and are analysing the results, as part of their research into the virus transmission, and further research may be done with antibody testing.

'Financially you lose out because you have to send the children home'

The nursery has had national and global coverage of the outbreak and Ms Raven was concerned when PHE first issued a statement as this caused a flurry of media interest.

“We were a bit worried about what the press coverage was going to be especially when it starts going a bit viral. You worry about how it’s going to affects your reputation.

"We knew we did the right thing with our processes in place [and] our parents have been brilliant and have had so many messages of support and this makes it really worthwhile.”

Ms Raven worries about single site nurseries and the financial implications this could have on them with children isolating for 14 days.

She said: "Financially you lose out because you have to send the children home and you can't charge the parents when you send them home.

"That is the least of our worries but if we were a single site nursery, it would be devastating because there is no extra help at all."

Tips from the Acorn Early Years Foundation to help other nurseries encountering coronavirus in their setting

• Be prepared and create documents so your processes are in place

You need to know what your process is. It’s a good idea to be prepared so that you know what exactly you will all do if a nursery child or family member tests positive and what to do if you have to isolate a bubble.

• Prepare your written communications to send out to families

Have a method of communicating with parents after the nursery is closed. Give contact numbers for out of hours especially if you get the test results in the evening.

Prepare your message to send out to families. It is a lot easier if you have information prepared for parents of what has happened.

• Get everybody tested

If at all possible get everybody tested because at least you will have peace of mind.

• Good relationships with parents is key

Most importantly, make sure you have a good relationship with all of your parents. You need their support. They have to agree to go and get tested and to get their children tested. The risk is people will not want to get tested because this means their child will have to stay off nursery. You have to build up that trusting relationship with your parents.

By getting to know the parents really well, you get a good understanding of what their concerns are. After the test results, we were following up with phone calls to see if they were OK. By speaking to them all individually, they feel we care.

• Be supportive of each other

Try not to get judgemental and guess where the virus originated. Be supportive of each other.

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