A parent turns up with a child who has conjunctivitis, or a mild case of hand, foot and mouth disease, and most childminders send them home on the spot. It feels like the responsible thing to do. According to the official guidance, it is not actually required for either one.
What the guidance actually says
UKHSA's published exclusion table sets out how long a child should stay away from a setting for each common childhood illness. Diarrhoea and vomiting means staying away until two days after symptoms stop. Chickenpox means staying away until five days after the rash first appears. Impetigo means staying away until the blisters have scabbed over, or for two days after starting antibiotics. Flu means staying away until the child is better and their temperature has settled. Those four are worth having memorised, because they are the ones parents most often underestimate.
The two everyone gets wrong
Hand, foot and mouth disease requires no exclusion at all under current guidance, and neither does conjunctivitis. Both are common, both look unpleasant, and both lead to children being sent home from settings across the country every week for reasons the official guidance does not actually ask for. That does not mean you have to accept every child regardless of how unwell they seem generally, a child who is too under the weather to take part in your normal day is a different judgement call to a specific infection with no exclusion requirement attached to it. But if your policy currently excludes for either of these by name, it is asking for more than UKHSA does.
Where a firmer line still matters
Scabies sits in its own category. Guidance excludes children aged five and under, or anyone unable to follow hygiene advice themselves, until twenty four hours after their first treatment. Everyone else can attend as normal once treatment has started, provided close physical contact is avoided in that first twenty four hours.
Worth checking against your own nation's version
This table sits under UKHSA, which covers England. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each publish their own equivalent guidance through Public Health Scotland, Public Health Wales and the Public Health Agency, and on almost every line above it matches. Two exceptions are worth knowing. England sets chickenpox as a fixed five days from when the rash first appears, while the other three nations phrase it as until all the blisters have crusted over, which usually lands around five days too but is not a fixed count, so it can run longer for some children. England also spells out the under five and hygiene ability distinction for scabies above, where the other three nations state it more simply as returning after first treatment. If your written illness policy has not been checked against the current version in a while, autumn, when these illnesses start doing the rounds again, is a reasonable time to do it.
None of this replaces individual clinical judgement or your own registering body's specific requirements. But a policy that excludes for more than the guidance asks for causes real disruption for families over nothing, and this is worth getting right in both directions.