Scottish COVID-19 Inquiry|5 Nov 2024

Testimony from Early Years Scotland members.

Introduction

Rhona Black (Head of nursery and kindergarten Kelvinbridge), Karen Flynn (Director-Kirktonholm childcare) and Ross Keenan (Director Cosmic Coppers childcare-Glasgow) are all operators of privately independent nurseries and members of Early Years Scotland. They attended a roundtable meeting with the Scottish COVID-19 Inquiry on 16 May 2024.

Bubbles

No, unfortunately not the blowing kind, those would have been banned too.

‘‘Not only isolate the children and staff but we had to find spaces in nurseries that were able to be SEGREGATED to keep the children and staff in their own separate bubbles.’’

‘‘Mental health issues hit the staff and they really began to crumble.’’

‘‘We had 16 children in the garden in probably one of the coldest winters.’’

Transitioning

Transitions are the moves children and young people make from home to an early learning and childcare (ELC) setting, from there to primary, from stage to stage, from primary to secondary, between schools and from secondary to further education and beyond.

‘‘We were taking babies off parents at doors.’’

‘‘For children that was a HUGE impact.’’

Adverse impacts on pre-school children

• Social and emotional development

• Motor skills

• Language and communication

• Play

• Independence and confidence

• Feeding, eating, sleeping

• Personal skills

‘‘It’s very obvious that the children have lost alot of experience and understanding of social interactions.’’

‘‘Lots of children hadn’t been anywhere other than within the four walls of their own homes.’’

Support services

Staff were ‘‘all gowned up’’ and stood against a wall in playroom terrified of contracting ‘COVID’ from young kids. The most vulnerable children were abandoned.

‘‘The support we had pre COVID almost disappeared…there was nothing to speak of in terms of ANY support for the kids.’’

‘‘There was one child in particular who in our opinion shouldn’t have been going to schoool who’s support dropped off a cliff.’’

‘‘Speech and language support practically disappeared.’’

Severe mask+Lockdown harms

Warnings by child advocate groups like usforthem that this would happen from summer 2020 were ignored.

‘‘A ‘HUGE IMPACT’ on speech and language development…that goes back to the masks…ALOT IF IT comes back to masks.’’

‘‘We’ve got children with AMERICAN ACCENTS because all they see is youtube or American things on TV.’’

‘‘Our needs for speech and language therapy rose by around 30% coming back from the first lockdown.’’

‘‘We experienced HUGE amounts of children coming in after the first lockdown who were INCAPABLE OF PLAYING.’’

Additional support needs

‘‘Protecting the vulnerable’’..

‘The biggest (adverse impacts) was on those with additional support needs.’’

‘‘Children with additional support for learning needs have been left.’’

‘‘There is a HUGE backlog now on the ‘‘back of what happened.’’

Statement highlights

None of this crucial evidence was mentioned during the session.

‘‘One setting reduced the daily number of working staff to give everybody a break. There was fatigue attached to listening to the news and being bombarded with information and scaremongering. Going out into the world with empty streets was like a zombie apocalypse had taken place.’’

-2.6 of statement

‘‘The names of children were added to cups and plates, as food had to be eaten separately.’’

-3.3(b) of statement

‘‘Two outdoor classrooms, 2.4-meter-high Perspex sheets, and 'traffic lights' were purchased by a setting to accommodate bubbles'‘.

-3.3(d) of statement

‘‘One local authority told a setting that, before the pandemic, there were 130 children with additional support needs in the local authority and now two-thirds of all children have additional support needs.’’

-5.1(d) of statement

‘‘The calibre of staff is not what it was pre-pandemic. The new staff were said to take more sick days and have poorer mental health.’’

-6.1(d) of staterment

Lessons to be learned-Disproportionate measures

Normally the MO at the inquiry is to recite the ‘lessons learned’ section. Instead the oral evidence concluded with how the various busineeses in question were impacted financially by ‘‘the pandemic’’ with director Keenan almost reduced to tears when he talks about how the government furlough scheme saved his business.

‘‘90% of the children that were excluded due to outbreaks of COVID-19 did not contract the virus. In retrospect, it was unnecessary.’’

-8.2(a) of statement

‘‘One participant commented that they spoke with a clinician a few weeks ago who said that the air quality numbers they forensically monitored during the pandemic were useless. The participant questioned what else they complied with that was unnecessary.’’

-8.2(b) of statement

End

Links:

Full statement- https://www.covid19inquiry.scot/sites/default/files/ev-documents/sci-wt0171-000001.pdf

Video-Youtube- Scottish COVID-19 Inquiry- Impact hearing | Education and certification | 5 November 2024 (afternoon session)