Bracken Place Day Nursery

From the start of your journey at Bracken Place, our managers will provide you with a welcome pack and show-around. You will be introduced to your child’s key worker and your child will be given an opportunity to explore while we discuss your child’s needs. This is to help us get to know your child and organise settling in sessions. At Bracken Place your child’s keyworker will oversee all support your child may need whilst here. Your key worker will work closely with your child and the SENCO to ensure that your child is progressing and getting any additional support that they may need. If your child needs additional support an Individual Education Plan (IEP) will be put in place alongside you and the SENCO of the setting. The IEP will set up achievable targets for your child. The activities and targets on the IEP will usually be completed during language groups and other small group work times throughout each week. Language groups offer the children a more focussed point of their day where they can work with a few friends playing games that will help develop their needs. They will identify individual needs and plan next steps by evaluating your child’s progress through these sessions, accessing additional support from other professionals where necessary. We believe in the importance of parent partnership and will always work alongside you when devising new plans for your child; we will also provide you with ideas to help support you and your child at home.

At Bracken Place we complete our planning on a weekly basis based on the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Curriculum. We will meet your child’s individual needs by planning activities weekly that are specifically for them. We ensure that we follow children’s interests to support their learning and individual needs. We ensure that when either planning small group or larger group activities they are devised in different ways to suit each child’s personal needs. Over the last year in line with the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) Bracken Place have actively ensured that all resources and activities within each unit are accessible for all of the children that attend the setting. We regularly self-evaluate our setting and reflect upon the accessibility of our resources. At Bracken Place we would be flexible to meet the individual needs of your child. In some cases we may devise IEP’s to guide certain areas of your child’s learning; these may be identified areas that your child may need extra support on. When devising the IEP’s your child’s interests are taken into account alongside the type of learner that your child is. We do this to provide suitable targets for your child that link to their interests; this ensures a fun and interesting learning manner that suits them. In this case your child’s key worker will have regular meetings with you every six weeks to discuss their progress and put new plans into place. You will receive a copy of this after each meeting.

At Bracken Place every child has an Online Learning Journal which is made up of a variety of photo and typed observations. The learning journals are constantly available for parents to see, as they are able to securely access them from home via an application called Tapestry. All contributions from home help us to see what your child gets up to and to gather an over view of their development as sometime children are very different at home. The observations in the Journals are made up of monthly ‘planned’ next steps which support your child’s individual needs. Your child’s key worker will also send home other picture and written observations of your child achieving throughout their play at nursery or preschool. When your child achieves their planned next step their key worker will extend their development. At Bracken Place we also provide you with regular EYFS full assessments so that you are able to fully understand which milestones your child has achieved. At Bracken Place we offer an open door policy and you are welcome to make an appointment to meet with your child’s key worker at any time. If your child has an IEP then these targets are carried out in a similar way to ‘next steps’. An IEP lays out a more specific target for your child to achieve. In this case your child’s key worker will have regular meetings with you every six weeks to discuss their progress and put new plans into place.

The aim of Bracken Place is to provide a nurturing, caring and stimulating environment for every unique child. One where all children are safe respected and treated as individuals in an inclusive manner to ensure every child has the opportunity to develop their self esteem and self awareness. Bracken Place has their own individual policy for administering medicines which can be viewed in Pre-school and Nursery policy folder. The policy states that all medicines that need to be administered must be prescribed by a doctor and the child receiving them must have started the medication 24 hours prior to coming into the setting. When a child needs prescribed medicine to be provided, the carers at Bracken Place will ask for either a long term or short term medicine form to be filled out. All staff in the unit will be informed when a child needs to receive medicine. At Bracken Place we have procedures in place to support children with allergies and dietary needs. These procedures include; *A meeting with your child’s key worker *A meeting with Jane (Head Cook) in the Kitchen. *Paper work is carried out by the parents to inform staff of what the child is not allowed. *A poster of the child’s requirements is put up within the unit. Bracken Place aims to ensure that all staff are up to date with first aid training and that they receive relevant safeguarding training depending on their position. The current safeguarding officer at Bracken Place is Kirsty Brennan

Within the Nursery and Preschool we are proud of the expertise of our practitioners. We hold annual first aid training courses for all staff to attend and the supervisors and preschool team have had EPI-PEN training. Since Spring 2015 we are extremely fortunate to have been supported by two of the surrounding local authorities. We are a Hampshire setting situated on the Hampshire / Southampton boarder and children from both authorities attend our setting. We are able to access a wealth of support and professionals from both authorities to support your child’s individual needs. At Bracken Place we have felt it is important to proactively facilitate our staff with training to ensure they are able to support your children’s needs. At Bracken Place if your child could benefit from addition support then we will do all we can to receive that additional support from the local authorities. We currently receive support from our two Area Inclusion Officers (Area INCO) in both Hampshire and Southampton, an Occupational Therapist, Outreach Support, Speech and Language Therapist, and Physiotherapist. If your child requires an Education, Health and Care (EHC) Plan, then this will be put in place with your child’s local authority in the autumn the year before your child is due to go to school, this is to give us time to appeal a denied EHC if needed. The EHC Plan will ensure your child’s receives the SEN support that they require when they leave us to go to school.

At Bracken Place we have two Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators (SENCO’s) Kirsty Brennan is the Preschool Manager who leads the SENCO support and is currently training Faye Mapleson-House to support the children in the nursery. The SENCO attended regular SENCO support meetings. At Bracken Place we feel it is important to insure all staff are trained in recognising and supporting additional needs. We provide all staff with in house Induction to SEN training, NVQ level 1,2 and 3 training and host a variety of in house training courses such as Makaton training, Behaviour Management training and Speech and Language training. We attend various training courses to support all of our staff, and attend refresher courses. We continue to support our staff’s development by assigning roles to staff such as ‘Makaton Champion’ who will continue to provide resources and support to the rest of the staff. Two members of staff have undergone the 5 day training program ECERS which allows staff to rate and reflect on the environment ensuring that our environment is suitable and accessible for all children. We regularly update our Makaton training to ensure our setting is inclusive to all children with hearing impediments and Speech and Language delays. Our SENCo has recently undergone Including pupils with Autism Training.

>We ensure that all children have the opportunity to partake in trips and outings and that all activities are accessible to them. When we partake in trips relevant risk assessments are carried out prior to the trip to ensure the correct health and safety measures have been taken into account which ensure no one’s safety is compromised. When going out on trips our staff to child ratio is dropped to ensure we have a sufficient amount of staff available to supervise the children. This ratio is based on individual needs to ensure that all children have enough support throughout the trip; this also helps to ensure that any child with individual needs can take part in the trip. Policies for trips and outings are found in our policy folders

Bracken Place nursery is laid out over a two floor house, and we have a third floor available for storage of toys and resources. The children aged 3 months to 18 months are based on the lower floor and have free flow access to the outside decking. To transition from outside to inside the building Bracken Place Nursery would greatly benefit in the future if a ramp was put in, this would make the nursery’s first floor accessible to wheelchair users. We have not previously needed the setting to be wheelchair accessible but would be willing to put the facilities into place. The 18 months to 2 years 9 months are based on the second floor. This is currently inaccessible for wheelchair users as we have not previously needed to make it accessible. On each floor of the nursery there are nappy changing facilities and each room is set up to be accessible to children of all abilities. Bracken Place Preschool is Purpose built building attached to the Nursery. The pre-school is accessible depending on individual needs through the front doors or through a single side door. Pre-school also has a disabled toilet where children are changed. The garden facilities are also accessible via a small step onto the decking.

In the September before your child is due to go to school, we will arrange a meeting with yourselves to inform you of the different schools in your area and help you to arrange a meeting with them. We will offer you advice on what to look for in school, and attend the opens days with you and your child. We will talk to you about your aspirations for your child and discuss the differences between, main stream, private and specialist schools, and support you in your choice for your child. For the rest of the preschool year we will support your child in their development and provide them with the best possible care. Two months before school we will visit your school and have a transition meeting with the school, their SENCO and yourselves. This is a meeting where we discuss your child’s needs and come up with a plan for your child’s transition and induction into the school. After this we will encourage your child’s school teacher to come and meet your child as many times as possible, and we will support your child’s play visits at school if needed. We aim to make this a fun and comfortable experience so will constantly talk to your child about their new school/setting, read books to aid familiarity when they move and introduce school play into role-play environments. We also try to find pictures of your child’s school to make books find prospectuses or look on school websites.

Bracken Place has five units which are arranged into the ages of the children. Babies are aged 3 months to 12 months, Little Waddlers are ages 12 to 18 months, Big Waddlers 18-24 months, Toddlers 2- 3 years and Pre-School 3-5 years. Each unit is set up with a variety of resources which are age appropriate and that can extend and guide each individual child’s learning. If any child needs extra resources to help them we will not hesitate to use appropriate funds from their local authority to get these and we will ensure that they are available as soon as possible to give your child the best opportunities we can. If your child has Early Years Sen Support (EYSS) We will arrange a meeting to discuss how best to spend the funding with you. We will access any additional support your child need’s which could range from Makaton training for yourself and staff to a private Speech and Language therapist for your child if that is what we collectively feel is going to benefit your child most. Resources are shared with all children to give everyone the same opportunities to thrive, for example your child’s practitioner will share the knowledge they have gained from different professionals with all of the children within the setting so everyone benefits and thrives.

As soon as we have reasons to believe that your child may need extra support or in the case that you have come to ask with some concerns we will arrange a meeting to go through these. In the meeting your child’s key worker will fill out an IEP or IBP to support your child’s individual needs. At this meeting we will discuss the needs of your child and how we can support them in the best way possible as the needs of every child will be different. The support levels gained will vary depending on the needs of your child. Together we will work alongside yourselves, the SENCO your key worker and the Area Inco to put support plans into place based on the targets on the IEP we write together and general observations that we take. Through these we will monitor how the support that your child is receiving is affecting their development. We will monitor their progress in regular meetings where support levels may change depending on the response of your child. The rate that children progress varies depending on every individual child. Some support methods that we put into place may help the child significantly with significant progress straight away while others may not show such quick progress. This is why all the support processes are monitored regular with meetings every six weeks and in some cases less depending again on the needs of your child.

This year we have implemented Tapestry into the Nursery and Preschool. Tapestry is your child’s Online Learning Journal which you can access from home. This provides you with a constant opportunity to contribute to your child’s next steps and monitor your child’s development. We have seen huge benefits of the implementation of Tapestry and our working parents feel they have a constant opportunity to communicate with us. At Bracken Place we operate an open door policy, this gives all parents the constant opportunity to talk with their key worker, or simply stay and play at nursery/Preschool with their child. We regularly hold parent events, such as Mother’s day, Father’s day, graduation and Family picnics. We also arrange meetings with our head cook if your child has dietary needs, and host cooking with Jane evenings to give you a hands on opportunity to discuss and experience different foods. Every year we hold a fund raising event, to support children’s charities, which parents are fully involved with celebrate their children’s achievements with a fund raising party at the end of the week. We keep you up to date on all changes at Bracken Place by our newsletter that gets emailed out to you.