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Why adults wear Personal Protection Equipment

Suffolk Children's Centres and PPE bear are reassuring children that adults are still the same person when they're wearing Personal Protection Equipment (PPE).

PPE and the younger child

PPE stands for Personal Protective Equipment and is a new word in everyday language now. This short video shows people wearing PPE and is for you to use with your child/children to talk about PPE and who you may see wearing it.

This could be someone seeing you in your home, in the community, a clinic setting or in hospital. Explain there is a real person under the PPE who is friendly and wants to help you and your child. The PPE is to keep us safe from a virus called coronavirus.

You may want to talk about how seeing people in PPE might make your child have some feelings like worry, being scared, being interested, confused or some things that are hard to describe, they might not feel these things in their head, but they might notice that their body feels a bit different when they see someone wearing PPE or they might feel fine.

You can use play to support your child’s thoughts, ideas and feelings about PPE:

  • dressing up
  • telling stories
  • sharing images of people wearing different types of PPE like in the video.

For more information and support please contact your local Children Centre.

Suffolk Children's Centres explain PPE