Recommendations on how to keep your family and your childminder safe

Live-out childminder arrangements do pose a larger risk. If you have the ability to house a live-in au pair or nanny, we highly recommend you do so, even if it is just temporary. If you do not have the option for a live-in arrangement, your au pair or nanny may return to work and come in on a daily basis, but you will need to follow very strict protective protocols.

Below we have outlined some recommendations on how to keep your family and your childminder safe:

Wash your hands well and often. Wash for at least 20 seconds (you can sing happy birthday twice!) with soap and water or use hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol.

When your childminder enters your family home:

• Ensure they remove their shoes and leave them outside in the sun.
• Provide them with sanitizer to sanitize their hands before coming inside
• Provide them with rubbing alcohol or hand sanitizer to clean their phone/other devices as they enter your family home
• Request that they take a shower immediately upon entering your home, they should not touch anything or anyone until they have done so
• Ensure they have a fresh change of clothes that they can leave at your home to change into after they have taken a shower
• Provide them with a cloth or disposable face mask to wear at all times in your home.

Some additional precautionary measures:

• Try not to touch your eyes, nose, and mouth, especially if you haven’t washed your hands.
• Regularly clean and disinfect surfaces and objects that the children touch a lot
• Avoid contact with people who are sick. If anyone in your family becomes sick, please self-isolate them from the rest of the family and notify your childminder that their services will be suspended until your family has been given the all-clear by a medical professional.
• Cover your mouth and nose with a tissue if you sneeze or cough, then throw it out. If you don’t have a tissue, sneeze or cough into your elbow, not your hands. Make sure that your kids have access to tissues and no-touch dustbins.

Questions to ask your childminder before allowing them to return to work:

1. Have you or any member of your immediate family been strictly following the rules of lockdown?
2. Have you or any member of your immediate family had close contact with any possible source of the Coronavirus (COVID-19)?
3. Have you or any member of your immediate family experienced any of the following symptoms: dry cough, sore throat and/or fever, in the last 14 days? If so, have you or your family member been tested for COVID-19?

Parents everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief (myself included!), and I have never appreciated my childminder as much as I do now. It has however been a beautiful few weeks of active parental participation and I have been grateful for the precious moments I have had to spend with my toddler. That being said, mommy has to work, and our Selinah is going to be welcomed back with open arms!

[Info via Charne Nel, Au Pair Extraordinaire]