Letter To Parents 14th January 2021

Dear Parents/Carers

Firstly, thank you so much for your support over the past week. We have been overwhelmed by the number of appreciative messages in what is a very challenging time for everyone.

We wanted to write to remind you of a few key messages for this lockdown situation with regards to children attending school.

Vulnerable children

If your child is deemed extremely vulnerable by the school, you will have been contacted and asked to send your child into school. As a special school we see vulnerable children slightly differently to how mainstream school would. As such we relate the ‘vulnerable’ category as children who may have a number of social care needs. This group is our priority and will continue to be so. Please remember, the national advice is to stay at home as much as possible.

Children of critical workers

As you may have seen in the press, the number of children in this category who are attending school is much higher than during the last lockdown, in part due to some changes in the guidance.

As well as referring to the guidance, we also have to work in line with our risk assessments for health and safety purposes, limiting the number of children in each bubble. Although we are trying to accommodate children of critical workers, please be aware that we are rapidly reaching the maximum number of children that we can safely accommodate in our school and would ask you to consider this.

The guidance has changed slightly over the weekend:

Children with at least one parent or carer who is a critical worker can go to school or college if required, but parents and carers should keep their children at home if they can.

Please consider whether your child needs a place in school if:

You are a critical worker but working from home.
One person in the household is a critical worker but there is another adult in the household who can look after your child
You need to send your child into school on some days but can organise childcare on others.

We fully appreciate that it is extremely hard to work from home whilst helping your child to access their remote learning and we will do all we can to support this. However, we would like to emphasise, that to stop the spread of this virus, which is highly transmissible, children should be kept at home as much as possible.

Free School Meal Vouchers

The school has now been informed that the food voucher scheme will begin from Monday 18th January. However, we are disappointed that the scheme does not cover the period from the 4th – 15th January. As a federation of schools we will look into how we can resolve this issue over the coming days. In the meantime, as soon as vouchers are released, we will make sure they are given out as quickly as possible.

Thank you for your continued support.

Yours sincerely

Ross Ashcroft

Headteacher