Features

Coronavirus: understanding practitioner anxiety and how to respond

Inevitably, levels of anxiety among early years practitioners are rising at the prospect of children returning to settings. Caroline Vollans looks at the causes and ways to alleviate the stress

An integral feature of the covid-19 crisis is that of anxiety. We are living through a time of immense sadness and great uncertainty where many of our usual strategies for maintaining personal well-being have, to some extent or other, been thrown into disarray. Though we each have our unique response to a global health crisis, anxiety is one that prevails when faced with so many unknowns.

Early years practitioners, irrespective of their commitment to young children and their families, are not immune to this. Throughout the period of lockdown in settings where a core number of children and staff were on a rota system, many headteacher and managers were faced with a situation where some practitioners felt unable to work due to their  anxiety levels, some requesting unpaid leave and others taking doctor’s advice to take time off.

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