Take twos: Town & Country Kiddies
James Hempsall
Friday, August 23, 2013
Building relationships with parents and children has long been identified as key to the success of early learning for two-year-olds, says James Hempsall
Town & Country Kiddies in Lincolnshire identified this at an early stage and this has been a key element of its success.
The chain has two nurseries in Louth and two in Market Rasen, and all have outstanding Ofsted outcomes. Town & Country Kiddies took a deliberate approach to recruiting specific practitioners to lead on the two-year-old offer. It wanted practitioners with a minimum Level Four qualification, expert knowledge of child development, and skills in parental engagement and support.
The main aim of the posts is to work with families and referred professionals from the moment a place is requested to develop their engagement and build trust and rapport.
The two-year-old lead practitioners are trained in the Parents Early Education Partnership (PEEP), the Solihull Parenting Programme, and early identification of speech and language support from Elklan.
These specialist skills enable staff to create supportive relationships with families, while identifying additional help for the family or child where needed. To promote these objectives and facilitate good quality conversations with parents, the roles are always supernumerary for the first 30 minutes and the last 30 minutes of each session.
The offer is designed to be flexible. A high proportion of two-year-old places are accessed term-time only, so the team mainly works term-time. But because some choose to access during holiday periods, it is important that continuity for families is achieved.
I would recommend that a setting gives careful consideration to the financial implications of these ways of working so it meets the needs of families and the business. Town & Country says it is able to manage the additional financial implications of the supernumerary hours through careful resource planning. It uses its apprenticeship programme to grow staff members who know the nursery and can provide necessary capacity.
This strategy has also seen other benefits. Before the role was introduced, there was a 17 per cent attendance rate at parent evening meetings. Since introducing the role, this has increased to 98 per cent.
James Hempsall is director of Hempsall's (www.hempsalls.com).
