EYES Update 01 September 2020

Despite COVID-19, Early Childhood Ireland’s Early Years Employer Service (EYES) is here to support you and can be contacted Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm, by phone on (01) 405 7103 or by email on eyes@earlychildhoodireland.ie. The EYES team is here to help with a range of issues related to the running of an Early Years and School Age Service, including your questions on COVID-19. If you can’t reach us, please leave a message with your name and phone number and someone will call you back when they are available.

Reopening

The EYES team would like to extend best wishes to all Sessional and School Aged providers who have opened or plan to open in the coming weeks. We hope that this reopening is a success for all of our members and their staff, and for all the children and families who rely on your service. As always, the EYES team is available to support members with any queries or concerns you may have about reopening in the weeks and months ahead.

UPDATE: ECCE PPSN Verification on the Early Years Hive

Pobal has issued further information for PPSN validation issues that have been occurring when submitting an ECCE registration on the Early Years Hive. Click here to read this most recent information.

HSE Guidance on Children and School/Childcare

The HSE has recently made a number of clarifications regarding symptoms of COVID-19 in children, and when they should be isolated and should not attend childcare services. Information on this can be found here.

Importantly, the HSE has outlined when it’s usually okay to send a child to school or childcare. Generally this is, if they:

• Only have nasal symptoms, such as a runny nose or a sneeze.
• Do not have a temperature of 38 degrees Celsius or more (as long as their temperature has not been lowered by taking any form of paracetamol or ibuprofen).
• Do not have a cough.
• Have not been in close contact with anyone who has coronavirus.
• Do not live with anyone who is unwell and may have coronavirus.
• Have been told by a GP that their illness is caused by something else, that is not coronavirus. The GP will tell the child’s parents when they can return to school or childcare.
• Have got a negative (‘not detected’) coronavirus test result and have not had symptoms for 48 hours.

The HPSC have also released a Decisions Pathway’s document, which outlines a number of scenarios that providers may be faced with. This document provides some new information on when children from 3 months to 13 years can attend their school and ELC/SAC setting. 

Reopening Support Payment and COVID-19 Grant Extension

The closing date for applications for both the COVID-19 Capital grant and the Re-opening Support Payment has been extended from 28 August to 9 September. If you wish to avail of these grants, you now have until close of business on 9 September to submit your application on the Early Years Hive. If you don’t submit your application before this date or if your application is in draft, then you will not be eligible for the grant.

GDPR in a time of COVID-19

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of members have queried the collection of data for the purpose of contact tracing and other uses. The Data Protection Commissioner states that measures taken in response to COVID-19 involving the use of personal data, including health data, should be necessary and proportionate. Decisions in this regard should be informed by the guidance and/or directions of public health authorities, or other relevant authorities.

As such, when considering what data to gather, members should be aware of their following obligations:

• Lawfulness: Employers have a legal obligation to protect their employees under the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 (as amended). This obligation together with Article 9(2)(b) GDPR provides a legal basis to process personal data, including health data, where it is deemed necessary and proportionate to do so. Any data that is processed must be treated in a confidential manner i.e. any communications to staff about the possible presence of COVID-19 in the workplace should not generally identify any individual employees.
• Transparency: Organisations processing personal data must be transparent regarding the measures they implement in this context, including the purpose of collecting the personal data and how long it will be retained for. They must provide individuals with information regarding the processing of their personal data in a format that is concise, easily accessible, easy to understand, and in clear and plain language.
• Confidentiality: Any data processing in the context of preventing the spread of COVID-19 must be carried out in a manner that ensures security of the data, in particular where health data is concerned. The identity of affected individuals should not be disclosed to any third parties or to their colleagues without a clear justification.
• Minimisation: As with any data processing, only the minimum necessary amount of data should be processed to achieve the purpose of implementing measures to prevent or contain the spread of COVID-19.
• Accountability: Controllers should also ensure they document any decision-making process regarding measures implemented to manage COVID-19, which involve the processing of personal data.

Further information on COVID-19 can be found here, and further information on GDPR and COVID-19 can be found here.