While preparations are in full swing, RTL spoke to the platform coordinator of day care centres in Luxembourg, Laurent Roder, who has also been working from home since the lockdown.
Only 9 centres are currently operational, which take care of roughly 60 to 70 children per week. For the most part, these are toddlers and children of primary school age whose parents work in the health care sector. According to the Ministry of Education, only one staff member had so far been tested positive for coronavirus and was subsequently replaced. But a few dozen children are on a different level of the scale compared to the number of children usually registered with a day care centre. For instance, in Wiltz there were a maximum of 2 children in one room at the same time, while there are usually 170. Laurent Roder is well aware that “social distancing” is much easier to apply under these circumstances. Besides masks and keeping distance, the situation was also explained to the children.
According to the director of the centre in Wiltz, children were mostly already aware of the situation through their parents’ professions. Nevertheless, he stressed how important it is to allow the children to understand the situation as well as the rules which are the result of it. This is why it is important to trust them and allow them to actively take part in what is going on.
Of course, when it comes to babies and toddlers, it is not possible to keep a distance of two metres. Here, different hygiene methods are required, e.g. washing and disinfecting hands even more often. The biggest challenge in the eyes of Laurent Roder is logistics. It will be quite difficult to find enough rooms and space in order to guarantee social distancing. Furthermore, eenough staff members need to be available to manage the individual groups. Shortfalls in staff numbers may be possible with the risk of infection.
One thing is clear: plenty of work needs to be done before nurseries and day care centres can open up again on 25 May. According to Laurent Roder, everyone involved in childcare was willing to actively work together to return to normality in Luxembourg’s day care centres.
