With COVID-19 cases on the rise in our community, we'd like to offer some clarification as to when children should stay home. Please remember, we are not counting any of these absences "against" you in any way. We understand how difficult it is to keep your children home for extended times, and we appreciate your commitment to the health and safety of all of our children and staff.

This is a helpful resource from the Oakland County Health Department for schools on when to stay home (see page 3 of the document for the flow chart on this.) Each family also received a printed copy of this flowchart sent home today, so you can easily find it when you need it.

To be clear, these are some instances when your child should stay home from therapy:

• If ANYONE in your household is waiting for COVID-19 test results, please keep your child home.
• If your child has had close contact with ANYONE who has tested positive, your child must stay home for 14 days after his last exposure to the positive person. If the person lives in your household and is unable to isolate, this will mean 14 days AFTER this person has tested negative.
• If your child is quarantining due to exposure to COVID-19, and develops symptoms, he will be eligible to return after 10 days from symptom onset AND at least 24 hours fever free without medication and all symptoms have improved.
• If your child has any symptoms, then clearly he must stay home.

We understand that this is a burden on families, but we appreciate your cooperation. Please contact us if anyone in your family is experiencing symptoms, has tested positive, or has been exposed, and we are happy to help walk you through it.

As you know, aside from today when it's still pretty beautiful out, it is starting to get chilly again! We are planning on continuing to take the children outside to play as much as possible throughout the winter. We will take them outside as long as the wind chill is above 20 degrees. This means kids need their gloves or mittens, hats, warm coats, and eventually boots and snow pants.

In Burton, we can play on our playground year round, so we definitely need the gear. In Brighton, we may decrease playing outside, but our children have to walk outside to get to the motor room, and we will still bundle up for that walk.

In both locations, going outside creates great opportunities for your child to practice putting on and taking off his own gear!

We will send winter gear home daily, so that you have it if you need it in the evenings or on the weekends.

An easy way to send it is to keep it in a reusable shopping bag with your child's name on it. Then we can pack it all up at the end of the day.

Please help us in wishing the best for our colleague and friend, Evey! As many parents know, Evey has made a decision to take a new position that will utilize her recently certified BCBA status fully. She has been with us for over a year now, after only planning to join our team for the summer as she worked toward her BCBA. She has been a great addition to our team, and has helped many of our families with additional sessions. We wish her the best!

Please let us know if you have any planned upcoming absences due to the holidays, so that we may plan our staff schedule accordingly.

Here's a link to the CDC recommendations on holiday celebrations, as you consider your plans.

With the holidays approaching, we want you to know how much we appreciate you sharing your children with us every day of the year! We know that you have placed an enormous amount of trust in us, and we are humbled to spend this time working with your child and family.

At this time of year parents may feel they would like to thank the people who spend so much time with their children. While this may be a common and acceptable thing to do in a number of other settings, due to our professional ethics, we are unable to accept gifts from our families and we wanted to make sure you know that. The Professional and Ethical Compliance Code for Behavior Analysts and RBTs states clearly that we cannot ethically accept gifts. As we strive to perform to a high standard of practice, we feel it is important to preserve this code.

If you feel like you would like to give an extra special thank you to any of our staff, please know that we would love to hear your feedback on our parent surveys, be thrilled to receive a handwritten thank you note, or absolutely treasure a picture your child colors for us. Outside of those things, we cannot accept gifts.

We are working on finalizing plans to allow the kids to celebrate before our holiday break. We are planning for the activities to allow for social distancing, but still be a lot of fun. One thing we do almost every year is a gift exchange between the children. We ask that each family bring in a gently used children's book for the exchange. Please keep your eyes peeled for a former favorite from around your house that you'd like to send in. We'll ask for them in December, and you can send the books unwrapped. Each child will wrap the book he or she brings in, and we'll help make sure they are safely delivered to a friend.