It’s hard to believe what we have all experienced over the last year or so. The CoVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact on the health and wellbeing of just about everyone. Beyond our personal lives, workplaces and our livelihoods were affected too, with early childhood education no exception.

Centres were faced with new protocols to ensure health and safety while battling low occupancy, staffing stress, financial pressure and more. At the same time, early childhood education continued to push through to support families. We cared for the children of frontline and essential workers and ensured we were a nurturing and comfortable place for vulnerable children. 

In Australia, we have been lucky in many ways, with everyone in our island homecoming together to do what was necessary to minimise the spread of the virus in our communities. Now in 2021, we are all living a fairly normal life. However, the impact of the pandemic is still being felt.

In early learning settings, many of us are still facing low occupancy. Finding and keeping quality staff continues to be a challenge for some services. We are supporting families, children and educators, many of whom are working through mental health concerns. We are nurturing many children who are playing catch up developmentally as a result of many months without essential engaging learning experiences. 

It’s also worth noting that no assessments took place last year, which means more centres are expecting to be assessed in 2021. Getting ready for assessments can be stressful, especially when you’re trying to get on top of everything else at the same time. 

If you’re feeling overwhelmed as we all settle into a post-CoVID world, rest assured that you are not alone. Together we can overcome the challenges that linger from 2020 and revive childcare centres and kindergartens!

In our upcoming event, ‘7 Steps’, we are going to dig deep into how you can fast-track your centre’s revival. We will give you advice and tips to tackle each challenge you are currently going through, including helping to prepare you for upcoming assessments (and how to absolutely shine!). We will cover more in our next week’s blog. Don’t miss this powerful webinar, you can register now!