Early Years and Childcare Broadcast

West Sussex County Council sent this bulletin at 05-02-2020 04:00 PM GMT

Early Years and Childcare Broadcast header

With you, with the child. Every step of the way.

Weekly broadcast for Early Years and childcare providers in West Sussex from West Sussex County Council - Early Help Service

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Wednesday 5 February 2020

Coronavirus – Advice for all early years providers

The government is closely monitoring the spread of the Coronavirus. The overall risk of Coronavirus to the UK remains moderate. However they understand that people may be concerned where there are children or staff returning from or visiting China.

Public Health England and the Foreign Office have issued advice for anyone travelling to the area. This can be found at:

Latest information and advice can also be found at gov.uk/coronavirus

Please share this advice with your staff and cascade as appropriate.

The DfE are advising that there is no reason why children should not continue to attend their early years, school or further education setting as normal.

What action you can take

A UK wide campaign has been launched to provide clear advice on how to slow the spread of Coronavirus.

Please help to support the campaign which promotes basic hygiene practices, such as regularly washing hands and always sneezing into a tissue, to stem the spread of viruses. You can do this by displaying this poster in your setting.

Advance Notice - Online Provider Portal Planned Maintenance

Please be advised that the Online Provider Portal (OPP) will close from 8.00am Friday 21 February, reopening Wednesday 26 February 2020 whilst we upgrade our technology.

This will affect all tasks within the OPP (including submission of Termly Provider Profile and Staff Update forms).

Please note that parents and carers will not be able to submit 2 year old Free Entitlement applications between these times.

Our FIS childcare website will also be unavailable to the public for one day only on Tuesday 25 February 2020.

Potential Scam Warning

We have been made aware of a potential scam targeting early years and childcare settings in the area.

A local setting received a phone call where the caller purported to be called Tom, who was phoning about the Educational Grant they had recently received for Loft Insulation. The setting receiving this call had not submitted a grant application, nor do they have a loft!.

For information on staying safe on the phone, including how to report a scam, see Stay Safe on the Phone on our website.