The needs of the nursery staff are not being met!

Studies suggest that children become less ill and spread the virus less often than adults. It seems to me that this is the right time to open up. Surely there has already been a lot of preparation in the day-care centres and children are expected with freshly worked out hygiene concepts!

Kitaleitungen are not included in the decisions of the Länder

I meet with the husband of a hospital director, who is a friend of mine, to get a personal impression. Until recently, the term "hospital director" meant "systemically relevant". Which is why my interviewee took care of the son in the home office.

"To put it in a nutshell: When I read the announcement that regular operations would resume on June 22nd, I went home in the evening and asked my wife if she had quit her job yet. She would have my support."

I then learn that while politicians publicly announce that measures are being taken and plans are being worked out, those who are supposed to take care of it are usually just as smart as everyone else.

Politics only pays lip service

New loosening up or changes in the concepts for coping with the pandemic are also only experienced by the hospital management from the radio or the press - like me. When a federal state says, "we are aware that this places high demands on the organisation of the day-care centre and that not everything and not in every case can be implemented by you without restriction", then this is at most lip service: "The official notifications to the providers regularly come later. Partly on Friday evening! After the daycare centers may already be closed."

This puts enormous stress.

l "m worried about my wife. She came to me after the final step of the opening and said, 'All we've seen so far is pillepalle'."

Many educators work on the borderline of burnout

After all the changes, the pressure in one's own life and the many instructions from above - now full operation again. The strain is extreme. Not only for the management, but of course also for the staff: "I believe that many educators are close to burnout. This policy is carried out on the backs of other people."

Usually the phones ring shortly after the press releases are out. At this point, however, the daycare centres are no further along than the parents who have them on the other end of the line. They neither know what to do nor what information they can give. Of course, some daycare centres are better able to deal with this "absurd" situation than others. Especially if they have relatively young staff who do not belong to the risk group

No meaningful solutions have yet been found from the country side

In Berlin, the Senate also proposed that "non-specialist staff known to the group or the institution could be used to bridge urgent staff shortages". Is this really such a clever solution in the short term? Personnel must first be selected and then trained. "If it is so simple, why is there an 'advanced training course' for educators? Don't we need all this anymore?"

For the politicians, the "positive development of the infection incidence" was the reason for "returning to regular operations more quickly overall than previously planned". But do the political representatives then also bear the responsibility? It remains silent for a moment. My interview partner leans back and looks directly at me: "What this does to the health of the teachers, what this does to the day-care centre management, is of no interest whatsoever. The main thing is that I can present the 'number' to the outside world."

The day care centre management has taken a crooked approach to good childcare

Under the conditions of the pandemic, real care cannot be provided at the day care centre at all. The children need the "emotional and physical exchange with the educators". The staff work without any intervals, under the constant danger that the pandemic will break out at some point.

"All this is carried out on the backs of the educators. Their needs are currently not sufficiently perceived at all. This does not mean that some professional groups have not made an effort to make themselves available to the Kita, but it is also the case that many educators and the Kita management have bent over backwards to make good care possible

They too have been under stress for months now. Not all of them have worked, but some have been at home for a long time and had to look after their own children. Now they return in this condition and the hospital management is supposed to coordinate all this.

"I dare say there is absolutely no trace of it at the top of the Senate Department."

Published on 30.06.2020