A week away from the start of the end of mandatory COVID-19 isolation of staff across all industries and an alliance of early childhood education and care services across NSW is in a quandary on how to cope with the thousands of children and the welfare of their own staff.
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The Daily Liberal has contacted several services run by private companies and NSW government, and Dubbo Regional Council in the city but they are mum about the changes to isolation rules as announced by the national cabinet last month.
The ending of mandatory COVID-19 isolation begins on Friday, October 14, but the NSW Regulatory Authority has not yet "provided clarity and advice how early childhood education and care services [will] implement this change in public health requirements while COVID remains an infectious disease", the chief executive officer of the NSW Childcare Alliance, Chiang Lim, revealed.
Even the NSW education and health departments have not updated its public health orders to reflect the changes, Mr Lim said.
"I dare say all early childhood education services and care centres are scratching their heads at the situation they are in and it's quite a unique situation because they are dealing with unvaccinated children so what do we do?" Mr Lim said.
Mr Lim represents 1,600 services across NSW, with its members in Dubbo area politely requesting the Daily Liberal to give them some time before they could comment on their situations.
"At this point in time, I would like to be informed with further information from our regulatory authorities on what the proposed changes will look like for our industry before making comment," one of the Dubbo-based centre managers' responses said.
As the spokesman for the centres, Mr Lim said while they are continuously abiding by their "legal and public health obligations to comply with current regulatory requirements on infectious diseases" and they are "desperately seeking guidance from NSW education and health departments in the light of scrapping the COVID isolation rules for staff."
Mr Lim said the centres are concerned about the health and welfare of children between the ages of zero-to-five under their care because only children from ages five and up are able to get immunisation under the current regulations.
The childcare industry is reeling from staff shortages and the industry is concerned about exacerbating their situations which can trigger further losses of early childhood educators, Mr Lim said.
"How do we legally satisfy the regulatory requirements of managing infectious diseases which COVID is one of them and our moral and ethical responsibility that we do not wish to be a conduit or a catalyst for COVID infection spread," Mr Lim said to describe the dilemma they are in.
A formal request for new regulations was sent to both health and education departments but there has been "no response", Mr Lim told the Daily Liberal before this story was published.
The office of the education and early childhood minister Sarah Mitchell and health minister Brad Hazzard have been contacted for comment.
Elizabeth Frias
I began my news reporting days in western and inner west Sydney before joining the Daily Liberal's Dubbo NSW newsroom. Telling all sorts of stories about people, places and events is my daily preoccupation so email me at elizabeth.frias@austcommunitymedia.com.au and I'll be in touch!
I began my news reporting days in western and inner west Sydney before joining the Daily Liberal's Dubbo NSW newsroom. Telling all sorts of stories about people, places and events is my daily preoccupation so email me at elizabeth.frias@austcommunitymedia.com.au and I'll be in touch!
