Parents

Parents are regarded as members of our setting who have full participatory rights.

These include a right to be:

  • valued and respected
  • kept informed
  • consulted
  • involved and included at all levels

How parents take part in the setting

Our setting recognises parents as the first and most important educators of their children. All of the staff see themselves as partners with parents in providing care and education for their child. There are many ways in which parents take part in making the setting a welcoming and stimulating place for children and parents, such as:

  • exchanging knowledge about their children’s needs, activities, interests and progress with the staff
  • helping at sessions of the setting
  • sharing their own special interests with the children

Key persons and your child

What a Hoot Day Nursery uses a key person approach. This means that each member of staff has a group of children for whom she/he is particularly responsible. Your child’s key person will be the person who works with you to make sure that what we provide is right for your child’s particular needs and interests. When your child first starts the setting, the key worker will help your child to settle and throughout your child’s time at the setting, will help your child to benefit from the setting’s activities (Please refer to Key Person and settling in policy).

Settling in and Admissions

We want every child to feel happy and safe with us. To make sure that this is the case, the staff will work with parents and carers to decide on how to help the child to settle and become familiar with their new environment (Please see our settling in/ Key person policy).

Clothing

We provide protective clothing for the children when they play with messy activities. We encourage children to gain the skills that help them to be independent and look after themselves. These include taking themselves to the toilet and taking off/putting on outdoor clothes. Clothing that is easy for them to manage will help them to do this. We have polo shirts and t-shirts available to purchase. These are proving popular with parents, as they save the children’s good clothing. We do recommend that parents put old clothes on their child as we do get very messy. We ask parents to bring a bag with spare clothing for little accidents – nappies and wipes (if needed) and sun cream and hats in the spring and summer months – as well as warm coats, hats, scarves and gloves for the winter months.