University nursery opens doors to children of key workers from wider community

Oxford University is helping local key workers by providing nursery places for children from the wider community.

Bright Horizon, which operates the University’s five nurseries for children of staff and students, also runs around 300 nurseries in the UK including two other community nurseries in Oxford.

One of the five University nurseries will remain open for key workers (Woodstock Road Nursery) but will also open its doors to children from the two local nurseries whose parents provide an essential service.

Jo Mason, Head of Childcare Services, explained why this will be so important over the coming months. She said: “A number of the key workers using our remaining nursery are researchers working on coronavirus as well as doctors and nurses and other NHS staff."

Supporting our community

Jo Mason continues: “Bright Horizon asked if they could transfer children of other key workers into the nursery we keep open from their community nurseries at Waterways and Oxford Business Park and we naturally said yes.

"We forecast that the nursery will still only be approximately 20% full even with the extra children from the community nurseries.

“We are very pleased to be supporting our local community and key workers by keeping one of our nurseries open in this way and welcoming the children from the community nurseries.”