We have been consulting with the school on the new COVID plan, and the OOSH leadership team has put together this plan which will be in place from week 5. If you have any further questions, please feel free to email us.

***𝗣𝗟𝗘𝗔𝗦𝗘 𝗖𝗛𝗘𝗖𝗞 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗠𝗬 𝗙𝗔𝗠𝗜𝗟𝗬 𝗟𝗢𝗨𝗡𝗚𝗘 𝗔𝗣𝗣 𝗧𝗢 𝗘𝗡𝗦𝗨𝗥𝗘 𝗬𝗢𝗨𝗥 𝗗𝗔𝗬𝗦 𝗔𝗥𝗘 𝗕𝗟𝗨𝗘 𝗙𝗢𝗥 '𝗔𝗧𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗜𝗡𝗚', 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗢𝗡𝗟𝗬 𝗠𝗔𝗥𝗞𝗘𝗗 𝗢𝗥𝗔𝗡𝗚𝗘 𝗜𝗙 '𝗔𝗕𝗦𝗘𝗡𝗧'*** If you have marked absences from the 25th on wards, but your children 𝗪𝗜𝗟𝗟 now be attending, please contact us urgently so we can fix those for you (𝙗𝙮 𝙩𝙤𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙧𝙤𝙬 𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙥𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙨𝙚) If your child will be absent due to continuing to isolate, OR if your child is off sick, OR not attending for any other reason, 𝗽𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝘂𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗣𝗣 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗮𝗯𝘀𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀 The My Family Lounge APP is now a permanent procedure, we will no longer be manually processing these by phone or email, so please head straight to the APP instead. Once you have marked your children absent on the APP, this opens a casual place for us to book in other children. After this week, we 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗯𝗲 𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝗯𝘀𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗱, so please ensure your bookings are correct on the APP. You now have access to view your bookings at your finger tips so it's important families keep on top of this More information will come as changes to the fee-free childcare changes. Once fees are restored, you will be charged the 𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗳𝗲𝗲 if you fail to mark your child absent via the APP before 3pm. We are able to access the back-end of the APP to see the exact times you mark your children absent, so 𝒘𝒆 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒃𝒆 𝒂𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒔𝒆𝒆 𝒊𝒇 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒅𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒂𝒇𝒕𝒆𝒓 3𝒑𝒎. At this stage, we are unable to process any requests for 𝐚𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐫 𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐬 as we need to finalise our numbers, ratios, and ensure appropriate staffing levels can be put in place. If you have additional requests, you are able to email us, but we will need some time to process these requests.

If you permanently cancel your ongoing places, you will loose them and getting them back will be subject to availability. You would risk not being able to secure the same places again As the government is paying for childcare and it is "fee-free" at the moment, we are encouraging all families to retain their permanent bookings and not make any changes until the fee-free period is over to avoid loosing your spots, and additional adminstration. The government expects to be providing 'fee-free' childcare until the end of the financial years which takes us almost to the end of term 2. If this date changes, we will ensure families are made aware of this. In the meantime, we are just asking that families download the my family lounge APP to mark absences (try to aim for 2 weeks in advance) so we can plan our staffing arrangements, food provision, programs, etc. Email and Facebook notices have gone out with steps on how to do this.

We are awaiting more information from the school regarding the face-to-face plans from week 3 We are asking families NOT to mark any absences (on the APP) from week 3 (11th May) onwards until the school has released the face-to-face plans. CASUAL PLACES: We expected with only ¼ of the school in attendance each day, we will have a lot of flexibility with adding casual places particularly if children get placed on face-to-face learning on a day that is not their normal OOSH day. We obviously cannot promise anything until we know what the plan is, but expect that there shouldn't be any issues ABSENCES: At this stage all places are still fee-free, so there will be no need to cancel existing booking patterns, and any additional casual places would also be fee-free. Please juist continue to mark absences for regular OOSH days on the My Family Lounge APP as needed

Please use the 'My Family Lounge' APP to report absences to us. Due to the large volume of absences, we need to switch to this process. Steps: - Download 'My Family Lounge' from your APP store - Emails went out (9th April) to log in to your account, please use these details to log in - If you cannot find your activation email, please click on 'Forgot password' in the APP and follow the steps (DO NOT SELECT REGISTER) - Once you are in the APP, click on 'bookings' - Use the calendar to find your bookings, click on the day and the sessions to mark them as absent (blue calendar squares mean those days are booked, once they are on orange/brown colour, they are marked absent) Please contact us if you have any issues accessing your account on My Family Lounge If you fail to mark your children absent we need to call to search for your child, this takes valuable time and causes administrative burden for the team.

Everyone still has their places, no need to re-enrol into OOSH Please contact us if you need to make any changes to your permanent booking pattern though

To support families, complete fee-free childcare will be provided by the government from Monday the 6th of April. If you have withdrawn your child from OOSH due to loss or decrease in income but you would still like your child to attend, please contact us via email. We will do out best to try and accommodate requests. If you could get them in over the ASAP, that would be greatly appreciated. Hope this helps relieve the pressure put on families, we are very happy with this latest support mechanism!

Scott Morrison described "essential workers" as anyone who holds a job in the economy right now. We are open for those who need to use us during the school break Vacation care will also be fee-free. If your finances were holding you back from booking, please feel free to book. No payment will be required.

If you booked into the first round of bookings: a. You no longer have a booking for your child/ren, these have been removed b. If you have already made payment, your payment will be credited to your OOSH account. If you are experiencing financial hardship and would like to arrange for a transfer back into your personal account, please email us. c. If you require care for vacation care, please book into the new program. Those details were sent out on Wednesday the 1st of April We won't be keeping bookings open for long, so please make your bookings as quickly as possible

Unfortunately we cannot make any changes from Sunday the 5th of April. A new system will be in place and the exisiting system will be locked so services will not be able to make any changes

On 2 April 2020, the Australian Government announced the new Early Childhood Education and Care Relief Package. From Monday 6 April 2020 weekly payments will be made directly to early childhood education and care services in lieu of the Child Care Subsidy and the Additional Child Care Subsidy, to help them keep their doors open and employees in their jobs. Families will not be charged fees during the period that this package is in place This is a fee-free period for all families utilising care

Unfortunately we are yet to receive information about this, we will keep families informed as we know more?

We are asking families not to make any changes at this point until we have more information from the government., If you need to make a more permanent change (e.g. don't need certain days now and won't need them once the COVID-19 situation settles), you are able to give your 2 weeks notice to withdraw those places permanently, as usual

If your child is not sick, and you are working and need support, OOSH is open to cater for you

You can get CCS paid for 62 absences per child for the 2019-20 financial year. This is usually 42 per financial year every other year. You are able to continue receiving rebates for absences above 62 provided you ahve a doctor certificate, please provide this to OOSH Your statement will show how many absences your child has had in the year. On the first page it will show you the 'YTD Absences'. Please keep track of these If your child attending preschool or long day care in 2019, any absences from July 2019 will also be counted towards your total. Absences are linked to the child's CRN, not counted per centre

We understand that many families may be feeling anxious at this time and we want to assure you that the health and well being of everyone at our centre is our priority. The most relevant advice remains that practicing good personal hygiene and cleaning is the best defence again infections. At our service, we are reinforcing the importance of: - Washing your hands regularly with soap and water (especially before eating and after using the bathroom) - Encouraging children and educators to cover mouths and noses with a tissue when sneezing or coughing into elbows. - Disposing of tissues and washing hands immediately afterwards - Avoiding contact with others, if unwell - Upholding stringent cleaning processes in our services - Practicing social distancing TWOOSH is also working closely with our school and the relevant government departments.

We have lots of families who still need support and care arrangements for their children. This applies not only to those who need to work, but families or children who are at risk or vulnerable. We need to continue to operate to support our community We will be risk assessing operations and how we manage each day to ensure we can operate safely. We have also issued a survey for all VAC families to complete so we can plan our days more carefully. We will have much smaller numbers and the whole school to access, so social distancing will be easy to achieve at OOSH.