Kathleen Funchion
Question:756. Deputy Kathleen Funchion asked the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs the definition of a pod; and the number of children that will be allowed in a pod. [11864/20]
View answerTuesday, 23 June 2020
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The "pod" or "play pod" model is recommended by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC) as a mechanism for infection control in childcare settings during the Covid-19 pandemic when settings reopen on 29 June.
The “play pod” model is a safe and playful approach to restricting interactions between closed groups of children and adults as an alternative to social distancing, which is not possible with young children. ‘Play-pods’ are not physical structures, they are simply a way to describe a group of children and adults who learn and play together.
The purpose of ‘play-pods’ is to limit the number of people a child has contact with, to facilitate contact tracing, and to support close, positive interactions between children and their adult caregivers, like in a key-person system, which is characteristic of quality childcare provision. This system will also reduce the amount of contact adults have with each other.
The public health advice from the HPSC is that while there is no evidence base on which to define a maximum play-pod size, play-pods should be kept as small as is likely to be reasonably practical in the specific childcare context.
The maximum adult-child ratios required by the Early Years Services Regulations, 2016 and the Early Years Services (Registration of School Age Services) Regulations 2018 are unchanged and so services must continue to operate within them. In most cases there should be either one or two adults in a ‘play-pod’ in order to keep play-pod sizes small. Therefore, play-pod size will be limited by those ratios.
For example, a play-pod that involves 3-6 year olds in full day care may have a maximum size of either nine (one adult and eight children) or 18 (two adults and 16 children). For school age children the maximum pod size may be 13 (one adult and 12 children) or 26 (two adults and 24 children). The ratios for other age ranges or service types should be applied in the same way.
While in the majority of cases there will be no more than two adults in a play-pod, there may be some scenarios where a third adult will be required e.g. where an individual is employed to support a child with additional needs or where Tusla, as regulator, has suggested that an additional staff member is required to help with a group where there is challenging behaviour. In those instances, the additional adult would not result in any additional children in the play-pod.