Business development: Winning the fight to stay open

Queens Crescent Community Association (QCCA) in the London Borough of Camden is proving that cuts and closures do not have to be the only answer in these straitened times.

Last year Camden Council decided that Caversham Nursery, in Kentish Town, should be closed on the basis that it had the lowest numbers of children attending.

Children's services manager Susan Barbara says, 'Parents felt strongly that they didn't want the nursery to close. Caversham is very much a local provider, with many siblings having attended the nursery. While the local authority offered these families places in other settings, they did not want to make the change or have to travel further afield.'

Ms Barbara says that parents wasted no time in getting together with QCCA to develop a strategy to fight the closure.

'Our first priority was to think about how the nursery could function as a business rather than as a council-run nursery,' she says. 'This fed into a business feasibility plan which outlined all the opportunities we felt we had to be sustainable.'

A WAY FORWARD

Caversham Nursery's business plan was very clear in its objectives.

'We set out that we are a non-profit organisation with the aim to provide affordable childcare and flexible hours,' says Ms Barbara. 'We also highlighted the need to offer more places than our existing 20. In essence, we showed how we could offer a good service at an affordable rate.'

It was decided to increase the number of places to 44 in order to generate more income, and provide wrap-around care.

The fee structure has been changed, although there is no significant rise and the nursery remains competitive.

'Flexible hours, giving parents what they need, are key, and we feel we can offer this to children attending neighbouring nurseries who need extra sessions, or wrap-around hours,' says Ms Barbara. 'We now offer a pick-up service for local schools and a breakfast club. These additional services mean we can marry up hours and ensure that all our sessions are being used.'

Ms Barbara points out that the process was not one of tendering but putting forward a business feasibility plan. As a result of the discussions, the council put the nursery up for tenancy and after closing for a month last summer, it subsequently re-opened in September.

It now has an independent governing body consisting of parents of the Caversham Nursery and QCCA representatives, functioning as an accountable body to ensure the highest standard of early years education.

'It really is a new beginning for the nursery,' Ms Barbara says. 'We are now hoping to be sustainable and generate enough income to allow us to keep the nursery open. We are looking at a three-year time frame to achieve this.'

MEETING CHALLENGES

Caversham Nursery currently has 20 children attending, on both a sessional and full-time basis. Some children come term-time only, but it is also filling new places with school children who need the extended services it now offers.

'Some of the children were at the original Caversham Nursery, and they are loving being back,' says Ms Barbara. 'Some are new and we have had a lot of interest generated on the back of our launch party last week, which was attended by Councillor Georgia Gould.'

Staff are well qualified at Caversham. 'We have individuals with honours degrees and Level Threes, one trainee and one apprentice,' she says. 'We also take volunteers from local colleges and as a charity we like to sponsor people who want to go back to college. We find that volunteer placements work really well, as they provide the opportunity to train with us and develop quality practice.'

Despite the tough economic climate, Ms Barbara says that training support from Camden is excellent, and the nursery takes a pro-active approach to identifying its training needs. 'We use appraisals and also put our heads together informally to identify where training is needed, based on the children and families we have attending. This might be in areas such as managing behaviour or special educational needs. Every staff member undertakes at least four days of training a year, and we place a high value on continuing professional development.'

With such high quality staff, Ms Barbara is confident that the nursery can fulfil its ambition to be sustainable within the next three years.

'It will be a challenge to co-ordinate flexible childcare, but we are already identifying where the gaps are. We are maintaining generous ratios of staff which helps with this.

'We look for new staff who can demonstrate loyalty to the nurseries they have been with, because it is very important to us that we maintain a low turnover. Some of our staff have been here for five years and that makes a big difference to the way we operate.'

She adds, 'Our focus is on quality practice and our outdoor area is fantastic. It is a large enclosed space with a canopy, a sensory garden, a mound and wildlife such as squirrels running around. There is a big growing area for vegetables and flowers, and the children love it.'

The views of parents certainly back this up. One says, 'As parents we fought a long campaign to keep a nursery on this site, especially one that caters for babies. This is a brilliant solution - affordable childcare with community values at heart. My son loves it.'

SNAPSHOT

• Caversham Nursery occupies a purpose-built site within the QCCA Centre, close to Kentish Town tube station. It now provides places for children between birth and five years.

• It aims to more than double the number of nursery places to 44 over the next three years.

• Breakfast and after-school clubs are part of its new extended servces.

• Seven staff plus management are employed, including a graduate, an EYP, Level 3 supervisor, an apprentice and volunteer.