eSign Summer Camp Emergency Contact Made Easy

Esign summer camp emergency contact

you amen well I would everyone repeat under spin it if you want to go ahead and say hello in the chat box let us know where you're joining us from or hiyo New Jersey California Colorado that's of Oregon sorry New York and a bird it's wampum I am New Jersey that's been great to see so many people joining us from all over the country great thanks everybody can plot some New Jersey we're gonna go ahead and get started your phone line is muted this webinar is being recorded and a link to the recording and slides will be shared later welcome to our webinar on operations guidance for summer camps Lika babes isten I'm the director of program and systems quality the national summer before theatre here's a quick overview of our discussion today first I'll share a little bit about nsla for those of you who are unfamiliar before we hear from our expert panel after that we'll have some time for discussion and audience questions then we'll wrap up with some announcements and follow well we're going along if you have any questions for our panelists please put them in the Q&A box will be moderating the chat box as well but questions tend to get lost in there so if you have a question that inside a box the National summer learning Association is the only national nonprofit exclusively focused on addressing the achievement and opportunity gaps by increasing access to summer learning opportunities and this lays goal is to increase nationwide the number of high-quality summer learning programs to achieve this goal and SLA recognizes and disseminates what works offers expertise and support for programs and communities and advocates for summer learning as a solution for ex eppley and excellence of education and helping succeed college career in life what our work is recognition high quality summer learning programs work and I've been shown shown to improve reading and math skills school attachment motivation and relationships with adults and peers we know that summer is a time of great inequity for young people and we believe that promoting and supporting summer opportunities is a way to address this this goes beyond the summer learning that's in our name we also want to see programs and communities addressing access to other resources like meals and youth employment summer is a time for innovation and exploration without some of the constraints of the school year kids are able to try different ways of learning interact with other adults and peers that they might not otherwise this is also a time of innovation for adults whether that's is opportunities for GMAC funny partridges I'm happy to introduce our first speaker Henry to Hart chief operating officer the American Camp Association any great thank you very much we also have Gress Gresham troop who is the on membership manager of the American Camp Association she's here too she may feed you some links in the chat and she's my real-time fact checker so if I say anything that's not right she'll jump in correct me thank you all for some time we we are hopeful that we can provide some resources and some information will help as you think about your summer programs a lot of our resources are framed around the idea of camp but a lot of those are day camps and and principles apply for other youth programs as well and a lot of summer learning programs do happen at a camp setting as well so next slide you great so what we wanted to do first is we'll spend a little bit of time talking about some resources that are out there and then we'll also talk about some of the contents of the key themes and the content of these resources and then we're trying to carve out some time to leave for questions later on so first of all if you're thinking about a youth program youth programs and camps the CDC originally put out what they call a decision-making tool ingression will share that link with you but this is just a framework to walk through the steps that you need to be able to check the boxes in order to offer programs in a safe manner according to the CDC so this is out there on the CDC website one thing I will say about this this is very high level one thing that I will say is that the resources that I will talk about from ACA they line up nearly perfectly with this decision-making tools so for each of the items that need a check there's a resource on our what we're calling the field guide for camps that goes into more detail about how you accomplish what's in each of those steps and so we'll talk about that more in a minute next so the the next thing that that the CDC put out there's actually one thing in between the two you can probably still search it it's called activities and initiatives supporting the opening of America and it has some information about camps too but most folks list States as they're referencing writing their rules for youth programs or referencing the decision making tool and then this document which is the considerations for youth in summer camp so the CDC came up with this as well it has a decent amount of detail and and they're really thinking about day programs and then there's kind of an addendum at the end of that for overnight programs so that's there as well this is the official guidance that came from CDC next so the American Camp Association has been working to develop a wide a wide variety of resources to help Kansas they think about operating this summer so some of this may not be appropriate to you and we're hopeful that meant much of it will so we'll talk about the camp Operations guide the dark blue box mostly but there's also a decent amount of other information there too there's a pretty robust section around mental health resources and there are some specifics the health and wellness section links to a lot of these CDC documents and other organizational documents we have a decent amount of resources we've created and then we link just some other resources around online learning events so we've done a learning session around what is program quality look like in online programs for youth what a safety look like but in a separate one around safety we just last week did one around timely around diversity and inclusion and how to create inclusive spaces when you're in an online environment so some really good information there as well so this is our if you go to the American it's a CA camps org is our website and there's a big button that says coded 19 resources all of these resources are open to the public they're fully available for anyone so those are there and if there's anything that's useful will we hope that you will use it next time so we recognized that we looked back at the swine flu h1n1 in 2009 recognized that even if CDC put out guidance it would be very high level guidance and that tamps and other youth programs would need a lot more specific information to figure out how to operationalize that guidance and so we engaged a National Public Health partner environmental health and engineering and what they have done is they put together a panel of experts and so the panel of experts includes physicians several physicians with connections to the association of the American Academy of Pediatrics the American I mean the the Camp Nursing Association they've got folks from the Harvard School of Public Health a wide variety of health experts and essentially created this field guide and so it is there there are recommendations on how to implement the guidelines that come from CDC and then also from state and local area so we'll spend a little bit of time talking about some of the themes this is the the resource that I mentioned that is lined up only on early perfectly with the CDC decision-making tool so there are 12 different chapters and they're different sections to each chapter a couple of important notes one is that alliance with the CDC information second important note is that we really see this as a living document and so we have we have contracted with environmental health and engineering through September we're actually working on funding to keep them for the whole next year because we don't think that the corona virus is going to go away as we think about youth programs all the way through to at least summer 2021 but right now we definitely have them funded through the end of September so they will monitor the ongoing situation and they will update the guide as new information becomes available as best practices change according to that new information so you can you can certainly download a full PDF of the whole guide you can go directly to chapters even if you download the whole guide I would recommend that you come back with some frequency and just check to see if information has been updated and will flag it when it's been updated so that's an important piece next slide so one other useful resource that we've been populating is we have a link on our website that tracks the the rules for when and how camp can operate in different states and there are some times that that day camp aligns with other youth programs and sometimes that it does not so if you look there in Colorado guidance for children's day camps and youth sports camps some of them there's some overlap there but there's this is a resource to see which states have written specific rules and and it links directly to those rules so we're updating this almost every day there about 20 or so states that have not fully published what their rules are yet so besides having the resource here for you the other important thing to note is the CDC guidance is simply expert information for reference our resources are the same thing neither of those is binding what is binding to you will be the rules that are written by your state first your state and then your local County Health Department and so one of the things we've done in our engagement with environmental health and engineering is they are connected to a network of state health officers and a network of local health officers and we've been pushing out information to them about our resources as they have been developed we have held two town hall meetings with our panel of experts specific to health officials to help them understand these guidelines the thinking is that state folks will have to write rules around lots of different areas and they may not know youth programs and camping very well so we wanted them to know there are resources to help them but even beyond that local health department's can set rules that are more strict than the state rules and a lot of them may have risk avoidance and because if they're not that familiar with youth programs they may just Charlie set tighter constraints and so we wanted to help educate about resources work that were out there and opinions about how you can do youth programs safely in the coronavirus environment we also held a - town halls for the general public the links to all of those town halls are also on our resource if you want to hear questions that were asked of our panel of experts you can go click on those and spend time reading those there was a robust question and the answer and we you know we had 5,000 people in one of the webinars and so clearly we couldn't get all the answers questions answered so we're working on posting answers to frequently asked questions about the field guide as well so those are all resources around them a specific guide next line so let's talk about some high level themes and I'll be brief here and we can leave I'd rather spend time where your specific questions are I saw some of the questions that were mentioned ahead of time and I may hit some of those in the overview so let's talk about some of the themes these are themes that are specific to our field guide but they align with the CDC guidance that is out as well next slide all right these are going to come up one at a time which is fine let's hit the first one okay so the the first thing that have here is protecting the most vulnerable people so this is the idea that we're really moving from a stage where the goal was to try and stop the advance of the virus and the and you know clearly you do that for individuals people's safety and health but you also do it so that you're not overwhelming the health systems we're now moving across the country we're moving into reopening and the CDC frames this as we're really moving from trying to stop the spread of the virus to recognizing that in many people the viruses is not high risk and that the virus is going to be with us until we have community immunity and that will most likely come in the form of vaccine but between now and a vaccine we will begin engaging in things that look similar to what we did before with some more safety precautions but we will also continue to protect the most vulnerable folks and so the CDC has some great links that help you understand who the most vulnerable folks are certainly there are folks over a certain age there are folks with underlying health issues folks going through chemotherapy but too are immunocompromised so the idea is that those people will probably continue to shelter to a higher degree than the rest of the population and how does that apply to youth programs where there's a section about that in our field guide but it has to do with just recognizing that as we are holding youth programs it is likely that we're not going to be successful in preventing the corona virus from showing up so it is it is likely that many programs will have at least one instance of the corona virus it's highly contagious and it is out there so the resources are built around processes to slow mitigate spread of the virus if it does show up and and to continue to operate programs because you have good protocols in place and contact and we'll talk about that in a minute so what that means is that you mean me to disclose to your participants that you know that there's a chance certainly that they may be exposed to the corona virus in their programs and you will want to encourage anybody who is considered a part of the vulnerable population to consult with their medical their physicians and get a recommendation as to whether or not they should participate in the program what's the risk there you really want to leave that to medical professionals and then when the medical professional believes that that we're able to serve them we as as programs wanted to do our best to accommodate those people and that may be having additional considerations for previously identified vulnerable population we want to accommodate as much as possible and as is reasonable so the first step is to disclose that there is certainly a risk of exposure and then ask for a medical consult and then we will accommodate the best that we can and we'll add in additional precautions for people who may be both next slide or next bullet so screening and monitoring so there's really three types of screening and monitoring that are that we walk through in the field guide one is pre screening and so as you are able and then this depends on the length of your program whether or not you do this but as you are able there's a there's a great link to a protocol in the field guide around how you ask participants to pre-screen at home before they haven't come to your program and so there's a fourteen-day chart and they walk through and they check off the chart and they're thinking about symptoms they're taking daily temperatures and they're essentially sheltering at home before they're engaging so that's one way to catch typically in a camp setting well at will do a health screening as we're doing intake this is helping people be in the mindset of looking out for some times before they ever get to your program so you ask your participants potentially to pre-screen prior to coming to your program then you do our intake screening and for a day program that intake screening screening happens every day recognizing people are going to environments we don't have control over you'll need to ask questions about symptoms about exposure and then take a temperature each day upon arrival and you may do a bit more on the beginning of your program then you do each day but you're going to want to screen every time people go home and come back and then we're going to monitor all day long so you going to need to educate participants that if they don't feel well if they have symptoms that they need to raise their hand and let somebody know and then you know you monitor appropriately and monitoring changes depending on you know if the instance that you have an exposure then monitoring changes we'll talk about that in just a second next bullet here comes so so there are a couple bullets out I'll hit the first one first camp as a bubble so the idea here is your program area you want to try and isolate that area to the greatest degree possible so if you're a day program you have people going home and coming back and that's what staff and participants that that's why you screen every day but during when you have the community assembled you're going to want to decrease exposure as much as possible so you go to a decreased visitors when you think about drop off drop off procedures you're probably restricting a parent so that they're not getting out of their car and there are certain procedures that they follow there as you have deliveries and things to your program site you don't isolate that from your participants when you have food service you're going to want to be thoughtful about people who the people who are doing the food service and we'll talk about that when we take it to talk about cohorts but to the greatest extent possible you want to make camp BIA protected bubble so that you're not having potential exposures all through the day that also means that if you typically do do field trips into public places that you might want to eliminate that so we want to eliminate cross contact with your population with other populations so you may have to change your program design if it involves going to a local museum or things like that you may have to switch some of those components to online components if that's possible so that's campus a bubble and then organized into program cohorts so this is a recognition of there are lots of questions about this this is a recognition that can't that children are not going to be particularly successful about social distancing all the time so you have not just seven year olds in your program asking them to stay six feet apart from each other is is highly optimistic right even in the best of circumstances so the from the CDC the CDC draws heavily on this and they're really using this concept when they're thinking about school as well you're here summer school or school in the fall this idea of having program cohorts so what you do is you have a the smallest possible group that you can get together and that that group stays together through your whole program day it's what we call in our field guide the household so essentially you're going from sheltering in place with your household to having a new program household that you join when you go to camp or to to your program in during the day and so you you have the participants and the staff interact is similar more similar to home than it is in social distancing so you think about your house you're not all staying exactly six feet apart from each other no one's wearing masks typically in the home but you are doing some precautions you're washing your hands more than you used to to some degree we were cleaning off groceries when they were coming in or packages and so it's the similar idea in the program cohort is that you are going to not share utensils you're going to try not to share equipment you know if you have crayons you want to have everybody have their own set of crayons if possible if you do have to share equipment you want to sanitize between each use so so there are precautions within the household but it's not on social distancing the way it is everywhere else it recognizes that we may be closer as we move around together during the day and so you do your morning assembly together you do your programs together you eat together of you on at these households to stay intact throughout the day and you do that for a couple of reasons one is if somebody were to present with some zones or to be attempt to test positive you can contact Trac very easily you know who's been in close contact and so you know if that happens when somebody's at home they don't come back but then you want to monitor the rest of the participants in that household and if you were just taking temperatures upon intake you may take temperatures three times a day with this group so you don't have to necessarily shut the program down but you increase the monitoring and you know who people have been in contact with and then programs can be made up of multiple groups of households so if you have a program with 50 people in it and your household group size is 10 you could have five five groups of ten and that's your that's your program of fifty but you have to social distance between the households so the neighborhood is your group of 50 and but you're keeping distance between the households even when you're all together so you may do a morning assembly if you have enough room that you spread out so that you have your households distancing from one another but you can all still get the group together in one place and and depending on how your state interprets this you may have a camp that could be made up of three neighborhoods so you can have a camp or a program of 150 people if even if the maximum group size is 50 you just have to keep those through those three neighborhoods apart from one another they're never in the same place at the same time and then those neighborhoods you have this small cohort group so a lot of a lot of questions about how mate what's the group size so here there are there multiple answers to that one answer to that is your state will set maximum group sizes many states have a group size of no more than ten in the early stages and then as you move into later phases of the virus that goes up to 25 or 50 and then as you get in the very end stage phases it may be 250 or 500 so our our guide recommends that you still organize in cohorts even if you're in a mid phase in your state says you can have groups of 50 together that you should still keep those those smaller households together now you could do 12 instead of 10 there's nothing magic about 10 except for unless your state says that your maximum group size but once it's more than that it could be 10 at 12 it could be 14 there's nothing magic about that number but our panel of experts says you wanted the smallest practicable in your program to maintain your program so so the state will be the first one to set your group sizes and then within that there's still good reasons in a program in trying to protect everyone to keep these small household cohorts together and I think there might be one more bullet yes so so your program should have a communicable disease plan so that is essentially an outline of here is what we're gonna do if somebody tests a lot of camps have these anyway communicable diseases have been a part of camp for as long as we've had camp and so for smaller programs or day programs you may or may not have that but what you need to do is have a plan that basically says if somebody tests positive here or shows symptoms here is how we're gonna handle that here's where we're gonna isolate them here's how we'll supervise them while they're in isolation we'll let them well we'll contact the parents to be picked up here's how they how long they need to stay home and their and their recommendations on all of those things from CDC here's how we're gonna have and when we're going to contact the other parents of the people in the household thinking about HIPAA you know you can't you have to maintain privacy here's one we'll let the the Public Health Department and so you need to have a communicable disease plan and you need to contact your local health department and talk through that plan with them so you will love them too ultimately they're the authority here and so you want them to agree on communication you want them to agree on what your plans are if somebody contacts gets symptomatic or test positive so you want to make sure you have that vetted before your program starts and have had a conversation with your local health department the more you partner with your local health department the easier it's going to be for them to allow you to continue to operate your program even if you have a symptom symptoms show up next slide okay so those are some of the main highlights we'll keep the rest for questions later towards the end but that gives you a sense of some of the key points that are in the guidance I believe that we're going to post this a slide deck this is simply a page that has links to many of the things that we talked about crush and put them in the chat but if you didn't catch them there these are just hot links to take you to those pages so I look forward to asking questions thank you very much for the time thanks Henry as a reminder this webinar is being recorded a link to the recording and the slides as well next we'll hear from Tony Strait senior project director for encase and at the Education Development Center Tony well thanks Lesley and I also want to really thank Henry and Gretchen what American Camp Association has been doing is really leading the field and lifting us up at this point where we're all attempting to get back to the the kind of care our children need and so your guidance and your direction at this point is really powerful and and we really appreciate it I also want to thank National summer learning Association they have been a partner with us in the National Center on after-school and summer in Richmond for five years now and we've been thrilled to work together on this Center for the federal government the expertise that comes from nsla and also from all of you in this community has been huge to elevate summer as an essential part of childcare in our nation so happy to be with you I'm just going to go a little bit through what we're working on and what we have to offer and then we can get to questions so just to start out thanks for this line so in case or the National Center in after-school and summer in Richmond is one of the ta centers the administration children and family at the US Department in Health and Human Services and there are a number of TA centers roughly nine at this point that support states territories and tribes in implementing the CCDF the child care and Development Fund Block Grant program right now CCDF of course are the subsidies that are provided for child care to low-income families working and participating in education and job training so it's that essential support for working families so that their children are cared for and of course at this time it's it's particularly challenging for our state's and providers to continue that support but ACF and the office of child care where we work are working as hard as possible to keep services services flowing Leslie if you go to the next slide so at any case the goal is really to help increase families access to and the quality of after school and summer child care and most people when they hear about child care think of toddlers and babies and and the usual kind of smaller children but in fact forty five percent of all children served through the federal subsidy program our school aged between the age of five and twelve so we really try to elevate that school age community school age takes place both before and after school on weekends during breaks in the spring and fall and of course during this summer summer is a very important time in school aged care in fact it's an increase in the number of children served every year roughly ten percent or so more children or served during the summer than the rest of the year these programs take place in community centers in family childcare and in fact in in homes around the country next slide please so our direct support comes from the office of child care at the administration for children and family and from the beginning of the pandemic OCC has been working very hard to be as responsive as possible at this point in time and I'm sharing with you right now the OCC website I'll post that for you really quickly so that you can access it so one of the first things that OCC did was contact the states and try to help them in how they're managing and ministering the Block Grants and giving flexibility in terms of the regulation on those grants as quickly as possible so states could respond the flexibility has been fairly significant of course it's allowed for the kind of care for essential workers that is taking place now and an OCC is regularly monitoring the states and offering support the next thing they did was ask all our TA centers to form a task force and to be ready to quickly respond to States in their enquiries on how to effectively continue to administer the subsidy program and and so that task force meets weekly and is offering support at the state level as Henry said this the states really dictate policy they're the ones that administer the subsidy programs both the federal and the TA centers are here to provide support but ultimately the states make the call about how programs are supported and and the safety regulations that have to be provided and next slide please so I'm gonna give you two links now so one is to our Center overall this is how you access us off the ACF website but what I'm showing you on the screen is our resource library and I think that's what I most wanted to share today because over the last five years working with nsla and our other partners the National Institute out-of-school time and the national subsidy Center we've been collecting resources to support school aged care across the country both the most promising research and the practice and the professional development and curricular supports that support quality so there's a large collection here it's it's intended to be recent within the last five years so the most most recent and up-to-date resources and I know there are a number of references to American Camp Association but we recently added a co vid search to this so if you if you go to the library you can identify resources that are specific to responding to kovat in the school-aged community those approaches that are most important and this is updating constantly we're working with a number of national organizations and thought leaders to identify the most promising resources and I saw that just this week the Georgia after-school Network released their collection of summer learning resources that the statewide after-school networks will be distributing which I think will be a great support to the out-of-school time world so I so look to our life we our library for some of those resources I wanted to call out just a couple that might be useful to folks if you go to the next slide you can actually advance past this one well so the the first one that I wanted to call out is recently we did a bunch of work around adverse childhood experiences and I think it's I think I hope that you'd agree that these times for our young people are challenging for our families and parents as well but it's a time to be thinking about trauma-informed care and aces and how we can be watching out for those signs that our young people need additional supports so there's a number of resources that unpack aces that point to how to diagnose issues and be as responsive as possible at this time we're excited to see program return but I think we have to be watching for the the potential trauma that children have experienced over these many weeks next slide please another item that we're encouraging folks to take a look at is a toolkit that we very recently created on EPR our emergency preparedness response and recovery and this is designed to be very user friendly a kind of quick guide in PDF form that you can hop through and find both the expectations around EPR are and the resources and tools that are out there of course each of these elements in EPR are important preparing for the potentiality of a crisis the response to it and emergency response and and and recovery the thinking beyond the specifics of the crisis so we're encouraging folks to view that tool and and use it as they see fit next slide and then this was created last year with an SLA one of the items that we were really happy to collaborate on it's obviously not Kove in specific but it is perhaps a useful tool both for providers and families when thinking about how to prepare for summer obviously we still want summer to be fun and engaging for young people and we want it to effectively support working families I think the this time over these months has reinforced to us that childcare is critical to our nation it's what allows our families to work to feel that their children are safe and to know that they're learning and developing not just academically but in body mind and spirit so it's just one of the other resources that you can find in the resource library and we're going to be continuing to look at how to support the field how to support our state so that their practices are as responsive as possible for providers for families and children and so I'm eager to be a part of the conversation now the questions that you have and how could we can support this return to summer [Music] great thanks Tony and so now we have some time for questions if you have a question for Henri or for Tony please put that into the Q&A box I'm gonna try to go through some ease as well as some of the questions that you submitted went through the registration process so if it gets started we there are couple questions of two or three questions in here about liability so can can you be helped liable if a staff member or child in the program contracts what are some examples of liability language - including registration forms so any thoughts resources to share on liability yeah so so I'm happy to jump in here I answered why I'm not my but I answered one question I think it pushes the answers out to everybody for a liability waiver the best ones that we've seen the Redwoods group which is an insurance company has some a variety of covered specific liability waivers so I put that link in the in my answer but that that's a great place to look for I think a lot of organizations are coming up with specific disclosure language around code of 19 and I think that that's probably recommended I think that the real recommendation here is to have a conversation with your insurance carrier and and if you have a larger organization your risk management staff I think you're gonna want to walk through this specific to your in your situation generally as we have talked to insurance companies what they have said is certainly there's some some risk involved there's risk involved in the programs we do all the time they are having trouble picturing especially if you're at a day program how anybody could attach the contracting the virus specifically to your program so there's a there's a high wall to get every which doesn't mean that some people don't try and do that and then the last thing I'll say about this is I do know that as their there was the cares Act there is a another Act that's being worked on called the heroes Act and there's been some discussion about having a general liability exemption for businesses specific to the coronavirus because so many businesses are concerned about opening up and having this taking upon this risk individually and in the interest of reopening the just waving liability generally through a legislation that is only an idea and everybody has not agreed to that idea and that idea is not law yet and so just know that there is some discussion you'll want to keep an eye on that in the short term I think what you want to do is is speak specifically to your insurance company and your risk management folks and determine how you're going to mitigate any risk there and turning they have some additional information I'm so passing questions about group size and adopted to use ratios that so we're seeing some questions is it the adults of youth ratio is that one to ten one to fifteen group sizes varying and then just who's included and who should be included in those ratios as an adult so for example if you have counselors and training but they'd be included as youth or adults any thoughts around both the ratio size the ratios different variations on the ratio and who should be included so I can jump in and say that that group size is set by minimum group size or maximum group size is set by your state and most of those in the early phases are thinking about those groups no longer that larger than 10 I know that I think it's New Mexico so that you couldn't have a group size of larger than five and a tend to be a 5 to 1 ratio that's the only state I'm aware of where there's that specificity around ratios and group sizes so the maximum group size will be set first by your state if you're following the cohorting mom that's in the field guide from from environmental health and engineering there's not a magic number on the group size you need to follow whatever your state regulations are but if we're working on the assumption that those group sizes will increase as the summer goes on we still are recommending that you keep a small group size could be eight could be twelve could be fourteen that there's no real specific on the size it's the mechanics of being able to contact track and to mitigate spread is the benefit of that so you know if you have a smaller program and could have group sizes of eight that would be better than having group sizes of sixteen and the group sizes include anybody in the group if you're using a co boarding model so it would be staff it would be campers it would be camp counselors and training anybody that stays in that household and travels throughout the day is who's within that group so we don't have any specific recommendations on ratios that really is a more of a program design question and what you're trying to accomplish and how many folks that you will need for that clearly you're going to want to have supervision but the ratio is not specified it because the intent is to be able to manage the spread of the virus and mitigate that as much as possible and so the ratio doesn't really matter there it's that you keep it intact there was another question I'll go ahead that's related to this I saw in the chat that I'll or in the question-and-answer so there was some question about what about program specialists that need to come in and do something with a household so you may have five households but you have one program specialist that that's going to spend some time during each day within those with each of those households so there are all ounces in this program design this cohort model for that and basically what it says is if you have specialists that come in the best thing to do is to distance to distance the specialists from all the participants in that household and the staff we're distancing is not allowed not fully you're not fully able to do that so in some instances the nekkid camp example is you know you may be giving archery instruction and you have to you have to help somebody with how they're holding the arrow it's going to be much easier if you're in closer proximity then the specialists will need to wear masks and protective equipment not necessarily the face shields but masks in particular and in some instances gloves as well so and when you're not able to distance those specialists and that also includes with food service so if you have food service staff the best type of food serve there's a whole section on food service but that if you are providing food the grab-and-go food is the best that's our any impact prepackaged where you can't do grab and go you want to avoid you know kids grabbing serving utensils so you probably want a staff member there plating stuff for folks and and again that's gonna bring some not people outside the household in closer contact with the household those people should wear masks and so the program design is intended to allow the participants not to have masks on all day anybody staff or participants within that group size but specialists or other people that have to come in closer proximity will need to have protective equipment and if you have households that have to get closer then then you would like them to it and especially if you're indoors so outdoors is better than indoors on the spread of the virus if you're serving food indoors you're going to want to have space between your households where you're not able to have as much space people do need to have the protective equipment on masks off and so that's a little bit about fruit sizes and about who wears masks and we'll hopefully that's helped maybe we had a couple of scary yeah there was just questions about Mastan and he's really of being able to monitor children for now hopefully that adjust those questions child safety programs like ministry safe and background checks look who found this information I didn't fully hear that question sorry you were breaking up a little bit thank you sorry about that they had questions about child safety programs and background checks I'm worried they can find information so again I would and and Tony may have more specific information I think that your normal background checking protocols are still in existence where we have adults in a delivering program or either young adults delivering program to children background checking is still appropriate and you would do that in the normal way that you would do your program there's a lot of questions about whether or not you do that background checking for virtual programs I would and and there's there's different information out there about that as to whether it's required I would certainly recommend it whether it's required or not whenever you have adults in proximity to children even virtually there's risk involved and you're going to want to do background checks and so so there's nothing about the corona virus that has specifically changed that the challenge might be timelines so background checks are handled very differently from state to state to state and in some states there's a pretty rapid response and so you can hire one week and by the next week you can have everybody background check other states there's much longer lead time some states have provisional employment during that lead time you're really gonna have to check on your specific requirements within your state there and Tony please add yeah I wouldn't I'd echo the same thing that background checks are an important part of safety programmatically OCC did offer some flexibility to the states but the states still determine the process for background checks and so I would again look into it and look in as Henry said look into it as soon as possible because sometimes it's there's a significant lag and at the other area flexibility was in terms of ratios but to say the states still determined so look to your child care agents for guidance on that um we have some questions about protocols for other usual like routine activities things like restroom break or it's just so any there's problems with those transport and other routine things like restroom yes so I heard restroom and I heard transport those of it was there another key one you wanted me to address no no no good you're breaking up a little bit so we're kept getting bits and pieces yes so transportation and again I think I answered one of these in the Q&A Trent there are there's a whole section in the field guide around transportation and you will not be surprised I don't think by the recommendations there you're going to want to fully sanitize whatever the vehicle is that you're using clearly vehicles that that have surfaces that are easier to clean are better for use we have cloth surfaces the sanitation can be more involved and so as so much as you have control over that you you know a school bus clearly you can clean those seats that's been designed that way pretty well and then you know the best the the best thing to do is to distance while you're on the vehicle and so that probably means not filling every seat and having people spaced out within the vehicle and maybe running more vehicle trips recognizing that won't always be possible where you're not able to did a distance on the vehicle that then then the people on the vehicle should have masks on and they should use good hand-washing protocol when they get off of the vehicle so as they're touching surfaces and stuff it's really you know we're all gonna be washing our hands a ton and sanitizing a time that's probably true in many of these things but where you have transitions you're going to want to do that it's just a part of the program and so those are the big recommendations around transportation again look at the field guide there may be some certain there additional specifics there on restroom breaks I think that again the it will be a similar application of the same thing so so depending on how you normally manage restroom breaks you know what is the opportunity to do that in a way that it doesn't put people in close proximity to each other and staff if you're within the household then you don't have to distance as much you can supervise restroom breaks just like you always have certainly significant hand-washing will be a part of that and so you know if you're outside of the house household like if you have people that are monitoring restroom breaks that are not a part of these cohorts then you know the protective equipment on those staff that are doing the supervision would be helpful for childcare centers that people should look at more well I think Gretchen shared you know really ACF and office of child care has looked to CDC to make the guidelines so the initial ones came out in April those were around child care programs that continue to provide service to essential workers that came out April 21st and Gretchen may have posted that and then the more recent summer one is is the one that Henry and ACA have kind of built their guidance around so it's really CDC that's offering kind of the direction in terms of the appropriateness but again each state interprets it in its own way and depending on the severity of the pandemic in the state and the the nature of summer programming across the state whether it's urban or rural or other settings so we we really encourage people to look local first and then look to the federal for additional support we have time for anyone want any 200 questions and so here's one just to reconfirm if someone within a Poho cohort test positive it's not necessary to send the entire cohort home to isolate any discussion regarding policy of refunds if someone tests positive and cannot attend and what is the client when someone who test positive returns to your program so general much about the procedure around if somebody tests positive right yeah this is you know the the million dollar question and we have this question a ton in all of our different groups and there's not a really satisfying answer because it depends on lots of different variables so I mentioned having a communicable disease plan that maps out how you're going to respond if somebody either shows symptoms or test positive it's important to map that out and it will depend on you know your ability to isolate your will tend to depend on your proximity to parents and their ability to pick up you know the lots of variables and it also depends on the comfort level of your local health department and so the the guidelines are written based on a public health model called concentric circles of protection from infection that's what these cohorting model is built on that's a well-established a model of preventing in the spread of infection that doesn't necessarily mean your local health department agrees with that and so having a conversation about what happens when somebody test positive with your local health department is going to be critical because a local health department may say you gotta close overall program for 14 days well if you can educate that person and and provide some resources and show how you're doing cohorting and significant contact tracking and you may be able to build some some confidence that if you increase monitoring by X that you could move on with the program and so the program is designed so that you don't have to click send everybody home and close the program but your local Health Department official is gonna have to let you know what their comfort level is and so that's going to dictate what happens more than anything really as far as refunds so having a plan and having that discussion will be critical its refunds you know that that's going to be individually up to you if it's on the you know it's three o'clock on the last day of the program it's different than if it's the one hour into a two week program we're encouraging our camps our member camps to be as liberal as they can in having refund policies clearly everybody's been impacted by this virus and organizations are feeling that impact too but if you really want to maintain the relationship for the long term with these families and therefore being as accommodating as you can but that's really you know that's that is up to you there's a little bit in the press now about some camps that are not able to operate and and and that are trying to strongly encourage parents to roll that forward and so you may read some articles about that we really think that you ought to be as flexible as you are able to be and you know you'll want to be clear on what your refund policy is if the program has started as well and you know it's reasonable to say I could have filled a position and now I can't and so you know we're gonna create it or there won't be a refund but be clear about what that is and disclose that on the front end of the program but we just would encourage you to be be thoughtful about maintaining relationships over the long run so I think that those are the thoughts that we have Tony you're welcome to jump in as well I just say I know we're running out of time but I would just say you know this is a time to really elevate and increase your communication and engagement with parents and families they've has you know we've all been struggling through this and they've been struggling through it and so the more you can be in communication the more you can have them be a part of your own needs assessment will make sure that there's you know a successful program particularly around you know maintaining that children are healthy and and able to participate great thank you so much Henry thank you Tony and thank you for every to everyone who joined us today just a couple announcements to wrap us up look out for more in our forces of summer series and also look out for national summer learning week this year will be July 6 through 11th we will be having some virtual events and celebrating and advocating the power of summer also without from firm nor mounts announcements about that and be sure to follow us on social media that's the best way to hear about new announcements new events and resources and you can sign up for our newsletter enjoying special cohorts appears interested in special topics like sports literacy Youth Employment you can also find out more about Emma sleighs consultation support and technical assistance for your summer program thank you again and as mention link to recording and the slides and all these links will be shared with you have a good day thanks so much bye-bye thanks everyone