Nursery Management: Managing Challenge - Spirit of adventure

Children need challenge - but how do you provide it while keeping everyone happy about safety? It seems that every publicised accident at a nursery brings a health and safety panic to the fore, just when headway is being made against over-protectiveness and risk-averse attitudes.

While nursery managers strive to take a positive attitude and use their professional judgement to provide appropriate challenges for children, they have to accommodate the views of both parents and staff.

At Childcare4U, which has nurseries in Marlow and Beaconsfield, managing director Karen Richardson-Scarfe says it can be a difficult balancing act.

She recalls the worst case she ever had of a worried parent - 'someone who asked if we could bubble-wrap the decking and put bubble wrap around the wooden stairs. I thought they were joking at first. But I always explain that our perspective is that children need to learn to manage risks themselves, and the children who don't take risks are the ones who have the most accidents.'

Parents, however, are often also the starting point. Carol Jane Medcalf, managing director of Carol Jane Montessori Nursery School in Enfield, says, 'The key for me is getting parents on board first, so they trust you as practitioners and understand the benefits to their children of challenges and risks.

'At our enrolments, parents sign a form saying "I'm happy for my child to be climbing trees, going out in the rain, playing with animals" - the nursery has a resident goat and rabbits - and so on.

'We tell parents that if they choose our nursery, this is what we do, and we don't offer anything that isn't risk assessed and safe. For instance, we have rules that children can only climb trees that we feel comfortable with and the children feel comfortable with. So far, a child has never climbed higher than I can reach.'

The Busy Bees chain takes a similar attitude. 'We provide children with a challenging environment,' says John Shattock, head of compliance at the group. 'We want them to be safe, but they will fall over occasionally. This is all part of their vital learning process, which can help protect them from greater dangers in the future that could result in more serious injuries.

'We look at the residual risks of activities. For example, riding on scooters and trikes or climbing on play equipment is generally exciting for children. Occasionally, they may fall and suffer some minor injury. We could prevent this type of accident by stopping these activities, but this would be disproportionate to the level of enjoyment the children get in comparison to the risk of what is likely to be a minor injury.'

He says Busy Bees has a Risk Benefits for Gardens policy, 'which ensures that nursery staff consider all aspects of risk, including transverse walls, gates, balance beams, woodland areas, paths, log seating, log cabins, wicker tepees, water, sandpits, growing areas and blind spots, while developing challenging play and enhancing their practice in the outdoor environment'.

OUTDOORS AND IN

Ms Medcalf's nursery is set in a two-and-a-half-acre site and has practised forest school activities for 22 years, before they were even known by this term. She says that every time staff take children into the forest school they carry out a risk assessment, and likewise in the soft play space and sensory areas before the nursery opens every day. Staff check for sharp points on logs, nails on play equipment and the functioning of electrical apparatus such as bubble tubes. They write down the conditions on the day, particularly if they are likely to be affected by the weather, and tell the children what's not accessible. The children are trusted to understand when they're told, 'Please don't use that today'.

Besides climbing trees and lighting fires under close supervision, the children enjoy whittling wood with potato peelers and digging for buried treasure - rocks the staff have painted gold, indicated on pirate maps - using metal spades. 'These look sharp, but they have to be, because those toy plastic spades aren't strong enough,' says Ms Medcalf.

'There's got to be an understanding between children and staff when we're outside,' she explains. 'A practitioner will call "one two three, where are you?" and the children must call back. An adult will say "you can go as far as I can see you", and as soon as the adult says stop, they have to stand still. We call it the stop game. We play it every day, and the children completely understand.'

Some risks present themselves. Ms Richardson-Scarfe of Childcare4U says, 'Our biggest challenge is that one nursery is a grade II listed building on three floors. The children have to manage the stairs, so we teach them to slide down on their bottoms.'

Two years ago, the garden at one of the nurseries was remade, after much research into which soft ground surfaces to install. Wooden beams and a clickety clack bridge were added. The redevelopment enables practitioners to 'zone' the whole garden.

'There's an art area with paints and chalk boards on the wall, an imaginative area, a construction area, and zones for mud, sand and water,' she says. 'We also invested in 40 sets of all-in-one weather gear for the children to wear. We can deliver the whole Foundation Stage outdoors - although the staff would rather not when it's cold.'

It's the staff, she adds, who are the key to managing the challenges offered to children, and those employees must be alert and confident in their own abilities.

USING IMAGINATION

Ms Medcalf reports that she has used expert advice during the past three years from a company called Down the Woods, run by qualified forest school practitioner Caroline Langley.

The nursery has also begun to allow school children up to Year 2 to attend the forest school activities. Feedback from parents showed that the older children were jealous of their siblings if they hadn't been able to do forest school themselves. At the end of their time at nursery, children are asked what they liked best about it, and Ms Medcalf says forest school always comes out at number one.

At Childcare4U, experience shows that offering challenges can simply come down to imagination. Ms Richardson-Scarfe says, 'I have staff who are really imaginative and they think up weird and wonderful things for the children to do.'

During the shortest days of the year, she adds, they let the children go outside after dark with torches and search for shiny objects such as coins that the staff have put out.

Another popular activity is taking the children out to a local phone box and having them call the nursery. Sometimes this involves fitting six children in a phone box - and that's a challenge for the adults as well.

MANAGING RISK POLICY

Collaboration comes first for Tim Gill, play consultant and author of No Fear: growing up in a risk-averse society. He advises, 'If we want children to learn from their own efforts and their own mistakes, then a balanced and thoughtful approach to risk is essential.

'One useful first step that managers can take is simply to open up the topic of risk for conversation with staff, with parents and more widely. Look for other settings that have gone beyond their comfort zones. Build confidence by supporting your more adventurous staff in trying new activities or approaches.'

Tim Gill was one of the authors of the 2008 document Managing Risk in Play Provision, published by Play England for the Department for Children, Schools and Families. This has been taken up as a policy of the same name by the London Borough of Islington, which last November became the first local authority in England to adopt a policy aimed at helping children experience and learn about risk through play in the council's parks, leisure facilities, housing estates and children's centres.

Managing Risk in Play Provision spells out a new model for 'risk/benefit assessment', which some childcarers are introducing in preference to the conventional risk assessment. Mr Gill says he would urge nurseries to take a hard look at their safety rules and behaviour policies.

'Are they all really necessary?' he says. 'If your mission statement starts with, "We offer a safe and secure environment for ...", then consider revising it, because what message does that phrase send to parents?

'Most important of all, never lose sight of why you want to expand your children's horizons. We all know from our own experience that children learn best how to cope with everyday challenges by having a go - in other words, they learn by taking risks.'