Little Me Day Nursery

Our key people are all trained to or working toward a recognised childcare qualification and therefor have a sound knowledge of the developmental norms and how to support children who do not reach their developmental milestones when expected. Staff are able to call for the extra support of the INCO who herself has a degree in Early Years Care and Education and will support and oversee all the support needed for your child. When the INCO, key person and parents/carers have completed an IEP the INCO will help the key person plan activities and experiences that will promote the development of the child. We involve parents regularly inviting them into the setting to discuss progress and next steps. We will also liaise closely with any outside agencies such as SALT, Portage, OT’s, EP’s etc. to ensure we are all working together on the same targets to give as much support to your child as possible. Where possible and on parents request key people have attended meetings outside of the nursery environment with professionals such as speech and language therapists so that we are able to understand information given and deliver a consistent approach with the child. Our nursery INCO allocates time to meet with key people that have children with IEP’s to ensure they have constant support. Our INCO will meet with the Nursery Manager weekly to update her on any progress and will prepare a monthly update on actions.

All planning is based on the children’s interests. The key person will invest a lot of time getting to know your child. The nursery firmly believes that a child is only going to learn if they are happy and comfortable in the environment and they are going to learn at a faster pace if the activities are centred on their interests. The key person will establish each child’s level of learning that they enter into nursery with, we call this the baseline. The child’s activities that are planned for them will be set on their current level of achievement and what learning the key person would like to see them achieve next in line with the guidance given in the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum. When we are planning for the whole room we will ensure that all activities are suitable and safe to be in the room taking into consideration allergies and dietary requirements as well as safety such as choking hazards with younger children. Adults support children’s learning by playing alongside them and only interjecting at opportune moments to support and scaffold the learning and not disrupt it completely. We work hard to make sure that children never feel ostracized and can be included in all activities.

We pride ourselves on strong partnerships with parents. We operate an open door policy so the office door is always open, so parents can come and talk with us about any concerns that they have and any challenges that they may be experiencing with their child’s development. Parents can also phone us or communicate via e-mail. The nursery has designed learning journeys with parents and key people to make them user friendly for both parties. The information is easy to read and provides at a glance a clear picture of where each child’s learning and development is. Learning journals are always available for parents to look through and parents comments are welcomed. We hold parents evenings twice a year. The key person will meet with parents and carers and go through their child’s learning journey. At regular intervals we write a summary of how the child has progressed and ask parents for their contribution to this. We have also run stay and play sessions for parents. We have found this a really positive experience for everyone and parents have said they understand a lot more about what their child can do in the nursery routine. If your child has additional needs they may have an Individual Education Plan (IEP) which will have targets on to support your child’s development, we will meet with you regularly to discuss progress made and to agree the next steps we want to put onto the IEP.

Our nursery looks at the holistic care of every child. When a child has additional needs we will try our best to accommodate them. Our onsite nursery cook is able to cater for a variety of dietary needs from allergies to cultural preferences, and to provide different foods suitable for different age groups. Children who require medicine are taken to the office where a senior member of staff will administer the child’s medication with a witness who has first aid training. Parents are asked to sign all medicines into the office. Where there is long term medicine given such as inhalers, Movicol, eczema cream, or any other regular medication then a long term medicine plan will be done with the parents when they complete the care plan. In cases where a child has an epipen the parents will not be able to leave their child onsite unless we have two epipens, a medical action plan has been completed and have confirmed that at least two members of staff have received training to administer it. We hold weekly room leader meeting where all of the Senior Nursery Management team get together and share information. All children with serious medical conditions will be discussed so that everyone is aware of them and how best to manage any situation. All new staff are given an intense induction programme that covers safeguarding, manual handling, food preparation and our policies and procedures that they must complete within their first six weeks of employment with us.

The nursery has links with lots of different agencies and outside support. If we are ever unsure of where to gain extra support we can contact our AREA INCO who can point us in the right direction. We have previously visited speech and language therapist with a mother and her son. . If your child receives support from agencies such as Portage, Occupational therapy or Speech and Language we will follow any programmes they set or suggestions that they make. If we do not already have links with a service that your child needs to access we will ensure that we do form these links to make sure that both your child and family are receiving as much support as possible. We have a lot of children who come to the setting not speaking any English or have English as an additional language so our staff are really experienced with helping children through the transition to nursery and learning English. Our staff team have had training in Makaton and use this on a daily basis with the children. Our settings INCO has a degree in Early Years and therefore is very equipped to deal with any Inclusion issues that arise. We have disabled access to the nursery with removable ramps and accessible doorways.

Our staff team benefit from having a nursery manager who has over 25 years of experience and our nursery INCO holds a BA in childhood studies. The staff team have received Makaton training and some staff have attended training on introduction to SEN delivered by our AREA INCO. As a company we firmly believe in developing our staff team and have recently booked two staff onto Inclusion training, as they have identified that they would like to increase their knowledge in this area, to be able to offer support to the nursery Inco. We have revised our policies and procedures and these provide guidelines on what to do if you have a concern about a child’s learning and development. All staff have supervision meetings every 3 months, this is an opportunity to raise any concerns that they may have about a child’s development. Different members of our team have experience of working with children who have visual impairments as well as having hands on experience with children with ADHD, and autism If we have Inclusion issues that arise that we do not feel our staff have had adequate training for we enlist the help of our area Inco. All staff have two continuous provision training days a year. The nursery management team identify any training that is needed and then either train the staff themselves or bring in an external early years trainer to deliver the training. We also have monthly staff meetings and these include in house training sessions.

>All of our activities are adapted to ensure all of the children are able to access them in their own way. We organise a lot of outside agencies such as French, Ballet and stretch and grow, we also have sole access to the soft play centre at the local sports centre and this allows children a monthly outing to the soft play centre. When we take the children on outings we ensure that a lower ratio of adults to children is observed. All children wear high visibility jackets and either reigns or wrist straps. All medication that a child may require is taken on the outing along with water, snacks, spare clothing, nappies and a work mobile phone in case of emergencies. We risk assess all outings. Routes and possible hazards are provided and events that we cannot predict are planned for such as a child becoming ill. There is always a room leader or senior on each outing. The room leader or senior completes an outing checklist that has all the children’s names that are attending the outing and their medical needs to ensure that no child’s health or safety is compromised by going on the outing. We have a six seater buggy suitable for children up to the age of three. This allows us to get children out and about in the local area easily and safely.

We are in a central town location so it is easy for parents who do not drive to access us by foot, bus or train. Our nursery is very accessible we are on one floor and have had bespoke ramps made so that we can have wheel chair access in and out of the building. We have nappy changing facilities in each room and in our toddler room we have a changing mat that is accessible by steps for children that are too large for staff to lift. All the doors are wide enough that the whole building is accessible by wheelchair. We have three sections to our outdoor area, all of which are accessible to children who have physical disabilities. We have a separate baby garden for children under two to give them the experience of being outside without the risk of being harmed by a larger child racing around. Our larger garden has been turfed with astro turf so children can access it in all weathers, there is a top section which houses an outside class room which would only be accessible in nice weather by wheel chair. We have previously had a child who had a rubber allergy and on the days that he attended we had to remove all items that were made out of rubber from the nursery. We are very open to making our environment safe for all children and where possible we will make adjustments to our setting.

Our nursery takes transition really seriously, we understand that any change from starting nursery, changing rooms, moving to another nursery or starting school can be very stressful for children and we want to ensure we have prepared each child for this as best we can. When children transition between rooms or to another setting the key person will complete a transition form for the child to take with them. When the transition is within the nursery the current key carer and the new key carer will meet and hand over the information. Either the key carer or room leader of the child’s current room will introduce the parents to the new key carer If the child is going to a new setting the transition form and the current learning journal will be given to the parent to read and hand to the new key carer of they wish. We make really good links with our feeder schools ensuring that they come to visit us so they get a good idea of the needs of each child. When it comes time for the child to attend school the Inco and key carer will hold an IPA (Individual partnership agreement) meeting with the school. This will give parents and the Inco an opportunity to discuss the child’s individual needs and to identify any support the school may need to assist with the transition.

We have four rooms that are based loosely on children’s ages our baby room is 0-1’s our teenies are 1-2’s, our toddlers are 2-3’s and are preschool are 3-5’s. A child does not automatically move room when they change age, some children will move before they have had their birthday whilst others a few weeks or even months after, it is completely dependent on a child’s ability and which room best caters for their needs. If a child starts with us aged 1year but is not walking yet they will more than likely be placed in our baby room due to the room being designed for children who are cruising on furniture. When a child displays that they have additional needs the nursery will do its upmost to provide the correct resources for those children. We have recently provided a larger and sturdier baby walker for a child who is eighteen months old and not walking. We also are able to borrow equipment from the resource library which gives us the opportunity to see if children use and benefit from the resource before we as a nursery purchase it.

Although we have an setting INCO who will help and support your child to the best of our abilities we are sometimes not able to provide all the support for a child with additional needs on our own. When we do have to get in help from other agencies we make sure that we keep the lines of communication open at all times, sometimes it is necessary to complete a PATCH referral which helps to ensure that all the agencies involved with the child are all saying the same thing. It also helps to ensure that where the nursery is not able to provide all the support for any given reason that a referral is made to a specialist. We work in partnership with parents to decide on how we will help your child with their learning and development at all times. The nursery will support each child to the best of our ability at all times.

We love to get parents as involved in the nursery as they want to be. We hold stay and play sessions for parents who want to come in and see what their child does at nursery. We hold parents sharing days twice a year and we have also held an open day event where we had a farm and a bouncy castle and face paints and had a lovely day chatting to all parents and getting to know some new ones. We rely on feedback from parents so we send out questionnaires to ask for comments on how they feel their child is getting on at nursery. Replies can be given anonymously and all of the answers are collated and the results are used to make positive changes in the setting. Parents have also helped with show and tell times, recently one of the children was very excited with his new bunny so Mum used a half day a work to bring it in for the children to hold, whilst another little girl wanted to show off her new baby brother. We recently had a parent come in to talk about Holi.