Nursery World - Staff health & Wellbeing: Part 8

How can employers ensure staff’s health and wellbeing needs are met post-pandemic, asks Charlotte Goddard

We are living through what the British Academy has called The Covid Decade. While the immediate impact of Covid-19 on society has been significant, the social, economic and cultural effects of the pandemic will cast a long shadow into the future, and are likely to disproportionately affect the more vulnerable in society. Just as policy-makers need to put long-term support into place to address these problems, employers must also think ahead in terms of supporting staff wellbeing.

As key workers, early years practitioners have been at the forefront of the response to the pandemic, and many took an initial hit to their health and wellbeing. Anxiety about catching Covid and taking it home to vulnerable family members, feeling at the bottom of the pile when it came to protective clothing, testing and vaccinations, and the stress involved in navigating new ways of working, had a massive impact on practitioners’ mental health, says Paula Dunn, early years adviser at the National Day Nurseries Association.

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