Pre-school near Buckingham needs extra space to help children who have missed out due to pandemic

A pre-school near Buckingham needs to raise thousands of pounds to get the extra space it needs to help children who've been impacted by the pandemic.

Padbury Pre-school is hoping to raise £15,000 to purchase a garden room.

The pre-school, which has 24 children on its roll, currently operates from a single-room log cabin on the site of Padbury Primary School, with up to 17 children attending at any session.

Manager Rachel Biswell said the extra garden building will enable staff to work with children who have special educational needs - as well as with the surprising number of children who have simply not been able to learn how to socialise, due to the pandemic restrictions.

Rachel said: "Since we reopened after Covid, obviously we've had a big intake of children, and you can really see the effect that Covid-19 has had - especially their socialising and also their speech and language.

"And because of things like our Sure Start centres, etc, they were closed as well, where you would get early help for these children, they've missed out on all of that.

"So they've come to our setting and this is where we've realised that there's some children that have really suffered.

"We've never had an intake of the amount of children with special educational needs as what we have this year.

"When things would have been picked up with health visitors, they've been missed because obviously the health visitors haven't been going out to see families as much.

"So we've got a number of children with needs such as autism, speech and language, ADHD, so we need the room for these children where we can go and do one-to-one intervention work with them.

"So we can talk to speech and language therapists to see what we need to put in place for these children and then do it at the setting."

The garden room also has the potential to be used as a sensory room for children with particular needs, Rachel said.

And she added: "There are probably quite a few children that would benefit from an area away from the main pre-school room for quiet time and relaxation and to have the sensory lights, etc, in there

"Because of the set-up of our pre-school at the moment, it is just one room.

"We haven't got that separate area for quiet time for these children that they need."

And she added: "Even our children who are developing at the usual pace, we find that they're missing out on things as well, because a lot of the attention's on the children with additional needs.

"The mainstream children, as such, can also use this room and we can do focused activities with them to help them prepare for school - even just sitting and listening to a story for five minutes and building up their concentration ready to go to school in September.

"So there would be real benefits to having the funds for this building."

Rachel added: "Because it's been really hard for parents to access these outreach support groups, the first time they've stepped into anywhere with people that are trained within childcare is with us.

"Before, you would have had the health visitor involved, you would have had speech and language involved - they've not had anything.

"And again because of the pandemic, the waiting list to see a paediatrician for a referral is 18 months to two years unless you pay private.

"Because now it's down to us as pre-schools or childcare practitioners we have to do the two-year checks - the health visitors don't do that any more.

"So where these children aren't key worker children as such, their two-year checks have been late.

"So there's just been a real pressure on childcare as a whole."

Padbury Pre-School has so far raises £1,618 of its £15,000 goal.

Visit the fundraising page here.