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Perth & Kinross Council will open five Children's Activity Centres for the children of Category 1 key workers and vulnerable children on Thursday, March 26.
The centres are at:
  • North Inch Campus
  • Kinross Primary School
  • Community School of Auchterarder
  • Newhill Campus, Blairgowrie
  • Invergowrie Primary School
These will operate throughout the week and work is underway to provide weekend opening if necessary.
Each centre will support children in small groups in order to reduce the risk of Coronavirus infection and keep siblings together.
Parents that are both Category 1 Key workers, or lone parents who are Category 1 workers, and who have no other available means of childcare are being prioritised for places at the Children's Activity Centres.
Category 1 workers are frontline health and care workers directly supporting Coronavirus response of supporting life-threatening emergency work.
Parents will be informed by 5pm on Wednesday, March 25 if their children have been allocated a place.
A number of Partner Provider Nurseries and registered childminders will also be providing spaces for children over the coming weeks.
Only those children who have been offered places can attend.
If there are additional parents who are Category 1 key workers and do not have any other childcare alternatives they can still apply for places in the Activity Centres. New applicants should email ECSInformation@pkc.gov.uk
Sheena Devlin, Perth & Kinross Council's Executive Director of Education and Children's Services, said: "Our Children's Activities Centres will help ensure essential workers can continue their valuable work over the coming weeks.
"We appreciate this is a difficult time for pupils and parents and I would like to thank them all for their patience and understanding.
"I would like to thank all Perth & Kinross Council staff for their unstinting efforts to get these centres up and running."
Systems are in place to support vulnerable children and young people, including online services and support from children and families teams, who will be in touch with identified individuals.
The SQA will be developing an assessment process and more details will follow.
School meal provision
In response to a further update on the social distancing advice, a decision has been taken to cancel the provision of meals in school buildings this week.  We will provide direct payments to families entitled to free school meals with the first payment being made this week. If you have not made an application for free school meals previously because of automatic entitlement (likely to Primary 1 to Primary 3 pupils) parents should email ecsschools@pkc.gov.uk or call 0345 30 111 00 to let us know bank details to process payment.
Contact us
If you have queries about provision for your children, please view our Coronavirus: FAQs about schools or call 0345 30 111 00. This line will be open from 8.45am tomorrow.