Therefore, we believe that a nursery should be totally transparent. We do this by encouraging parents to visit us whenever they wish. Parents are free to visit the Nursery at any time of their choosing, without any prior arrangement and see the room their child is allocated to, or any other part of the Nursery they wish. They may talk to their child’s keyworker or any member of staff working in their child’s room. Similarly, they are free to discuss any issue with the senior members of staff on duty at the time of their visit. Space and time are always found for parents wishing to discuss any issue with the Nursery’s Senior Management.
At the end of each day, parents collect their children from the staff who have looked after them during that day and are provided with a verbal report of their child’s day, such as what they have eaten, when they’ve had their nappy changed, slept, what they have done and where they have been. In addition to this verbal report, parents have on-line access to Parentzone (see below), which provides a much more comprehensive report illustrated with pictures and short videos of their child’s day. It allows parents to view their child’s entire Learning Journey. A learning journal is a document used to record and evidence a young child's learning and development as they progress through the Early Years Foundation Stage.
We issue a seasonal Nursery newsletter four times a year to keep parents up to date. As well these we issue other newsletters on an ad hoc basis, as the need arises. Additionally, we also maintain a blog, linked to this website as well as regularly posting relevant items on the Nursery Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages in order to provide parents with additional up to date relevant information about what is happening in Nursery. We also operate a text messaging service for when we need to contact parents at short notice.
Parents are able to view all the nursery’s policies and procedures (including Health and Safety) at any time. A formal complaints procedure is in operation to ensure that any complaint is dealt with quickly and appropriately. Many of these policies and procedures are available for parents to view via the Parent Portal linked to this website.
Parents have full access to all their child's records (both electronic via Parentzone and hard copy) and are consulted in respect of all aspects of the care we provide.
Parents are invited on a regular basis to meet with their child’s key worker and/or the senior member of staff with responsibility for the Unit. We deliberately do not hold dedicated parent’s evenings during year. Rather parents are free to discuss, in detail, their child’s progress and wellbeing with their child’s keyworker, or a senior member of staff, at any time during their child’s time at Nursery. They have instant electronic access to all their children’s nursery records including all assessments and observations (and are invited to add their own comments to these).
Suggestions from parents as to how the Nursery can improve the service that it provides are always welcome. Many of the suggestions made by parents and children have now become either a standard part of the Nursery daily operations or included in its development plan.
Parent portal
We have developed a dedicated parent portal in order to provide further information to parents wherever they are, and whenever they might need it, and to keep parents informed about what’s happening at Nursery. Using this portal gives parents access to a wide range of our policies and procedures as well as answers to the questions most frequently asked by our parents. It also gives detail of how to access our Parent Newsletters and relevant factsheets. Parents may also use this portal to gain access to the Nurserycam system.
What is Parentzone?
As a further commitment to transparency, we have invested in our electronic systems to ensure that parents can gain maximum access to the Nursery’s electronic records. The Parentzone system allows parents instant electronic access to all the electronic records of their child maintained by the Nursery. Parentzone is a service provided free to all our parents. This gives them safe and secure on-line access to:
- Their child’s learning journey (illustrated with pictures and videos) to which parents can add their own comments and pictures.
- Their child’s daily report (illustrated with pictures and videos).
- Their personal contact details (allowing parents to amend instantly on-line).
- Their complete financial account with the Nursery (including all their payments and details of all individual invoices).
- All electronic communications from the Nursery including Newsletters and emails.
- View their child’s bookings.
- The ability to request extra days and to swap days electronically.
- The ability to send and receive messages and notifications from staff.
- Parent Hub which is a dedicated resource for parents that includes a wide range of activities for children, nutritional information, recipes etc.
Parentzone allows our staff to easily collect information about an individual child and accurately track their individual development. Information collected provides evidence that a child has reached key milestones in their development.
Parents can access the Parentzone service from any PC or laptop computer, as well as any Android or Apple product, including tablets or smartphones. There is even a free dedicated smartphone app, which, once installed makes access to the service extremely easy. When a child leaves Nursery, we are able to electronically transfer a file to parents that contains their child’s entire learning journal including all the pictures, videos, assessments, observations etc from the day that they started Nursery.
Parentzone is provided by Connect Software Solutions Ltd (www.connectchildcare.com)