Role of Staff - transcript



Pre-Birth to Three: - Role of Staff

Narrator: Staff working with our youngest children have a vital and rewarding role in promoting the rights of the child, relationships, responsive care and respect. Understanding these four key principles enables us to be more effective in supporting children as they learn about themselves, the significant people in their lives, and the world in which they live.

Narrator: Effective leaders encourage leadership at all levels, where all staff and children, where appropriate, are empowered and able to take lead roles within and beyond the setting. Establishing a clear vision, identifying shared aims and capitalising on individual strengths, talents and personal abilities will impact positively on the young children, staff and parents.

Karen Butler: I encourage the practitioners here to take lead in various initiatives. They often come up with ideas that I would never have dreamt of, they have even gone ahead and sourced funding and resources. They lead change; we really need the team to take ownership, and I encourage that by allowing them to lead projects, funding their projects and letting them experiment and roll with it.

Some of the children come naturally with leadership qualities, but throughout day-to-day work, and the relationships that we have in the nursery, and the activities that we organise for them, we encourage them all to take the lead, we encourage them all to become confident, and we also encourage them all to respect each other enough to listen to each other, and act upon each other’s ideas.

Narrator: It is valuable and necessary for ongoing reflection, where staff consider what they are doing in day to day practice, why they are doing it, and ensure that it is evidence informed.

Jacqueline Cairnie: As a manager, the key part of that for me is about investing in your staff. I think staff need to come from an informed basis, I think they need to have true understanding of legislation, policy, the frameworks, how they deliver that. I think we respect each other; it’s about trust as well, it’s about nurturing each other as individuals, as a team, as a group. I think if your staff are confident that is very much echoed within a play room.

We see it every day, even with the bus driver, or the bus escort, or Mary in the laundry; it’s about all the staff knowing they have a key role.

Narrator: High quality and relevant continuing professional development takes many forms, such as discussion forums, visiting other early years settings, keeping up to date with relevant research, and attending online virtual or other professional development sessions. It may involve staff undertaking a course of study, in-house or at college or university.

Sally Anne Peek: Peek-a-boo’s most valuable resource is their staff. I believe that the more knowledgeable your staff are the more you enjoy your job, the more you enjoy your job the better the play experiences you provide for the children. And everybody benefits from an environment like that.

The way, at Peek-a-boo, that we ensure that is that once a month we have full staff continuing professional development training. It is vital that all staff are kept up to date with all relevant new policy changes, how it has been implemented, and what Peek-a-boo are going to do to ensure that we are meeting these requirements.

Although staff have to stay behind in the evening, they appreciate the additional information that they get, and about how that is going to impact upon their practice. The reason the staff stay here such a long time is because we invest in the staff, and we invest in the staff in terms of training, in terms of continuing professional development. And during the staff development review they have an opportunity to tell us what targets and improvements they would like to make for the following year. And it’s our job, as management, to ensure that we help them achieve that.

Narrator: Technology can enhance this process, such as engaging in online forums, or collaborating through Glow, which is the national intranet for education.

Narrator: It is through ongoing self-evaluation that links are made between practice and what is known about how children develop and learn.

Jacqueline Cairnie: It is really important that because parents have views, they have opinions, that we constantly are evaluating. We ask them to evaluate the service; what is it for you, what do we need to change, what do we need to look at. Involving parents in the way we have our quality improvement plan, consult with parents.

Narrator: Reflecting on practice individually, and as part of a staff team, is central to supporting the self-evaluation process, in order to improve practice and enhance the quality of provision for all children. Ongoing evaluation is also essential if staff are to create a positive ethos in the setting, and ensure that planning remains responsive and child focussed.

Ruth Eglington: We respond to the children on a daily basis by looking at our daily opportunities, and planning for them. And it’s crucial then that we follow that on a daily basis, and that might mean that we are changing the environment every other day depending on the children that are in, making sure the resources are there, and making sure that we are skilled at what we are doing. And then we would review that regularly to see whether or not that was going to be ongoing, or what we were going to do, depending on subsequent observations that we are going to make.

When we are planning as well for the children, where we have children with additional support needs we also discuss their additional support plans that are in place, to ensure that that is influenced in our planning as well. Because there is possibly something in a child’s additional support plan that needs to be actioned within the play room setting, so that is something else we take account of. And also our work with external agencies, so we may be working closely with a speech and language therapist who is giving us advice on how to work with a child; giving us sounds we need to working on, or strategies we need to be using, or we are maybe working with a physiotherapist who is telling us the importance of positioning a child in a certain way. And all these things would also influence the planning that we have, so this would all become part of the plan that we would use for the children.

Narrator: The key person approach is a way of working which is aimed at enabling and supporting close attachments between individual children and individual staff.

The key person helps children to develop relationships with members of staff and other children. They skilfully observe children in their play, their relationships, and in day-to-day activities, in order to inform future opportunities and experiences that best meet the children’s needs and interests.

Tracy Shaw: In Greendyke’s Family Centre we work very hard with individual families. We have a key worker system within the family centre, so that the children come in, they make an application – the family make an application – they have a senior member of staff take that application, and that senior stays with the family all the way through the time that they are here. So that initial “you tell your story once” is very important that they are not needing to do it again and again. And in terms of the children, they have a key worker in the play room, so they have a member of staff designated to particularly care for and look after probably about four or five children, so that member of staff works really hard, working alongside the family, building relationships. And staff are very skilled at seeing the stages that the children are at individually, and giving play opportunities to encourage them to meet their needs.

Prof. Aline-Wendy Dunlop: One of the things that we really have to pay attention to, really carefully, is what adults do when they are working alongside small children. What is their role? Are they there as substitute mum? Are they there as a cleaner and wiper up? Are they there to provide the toys and materials and keep the room looking nice? Well in a way there is a yes in all of those. But the role with working with babies and children under three is far richer than that, and I think the minute we begin to think about what we can learn from children, what they give us, how they trigger us, we begin to see what our role might be.

The first thing for me is in the quality of the relationship, and in that I think our interaction; our verbal interaction, our interaction in movement with children, in the way we open the sensory world to them, those things are really, really important

Narrator: When supporting young children through change, staff need to communicate regularly, meaningfully, effectively and appropriately with all adults who are involved with the child. Effective communication also involves staff acting as positive role models for children and parents, as parents may seek guidance around how to enhance communication, speech and language development, with their own children.

Steve Halkett: At Rainbow, working with parents and families, we encourage them to come in from day one and spend as much time as they can within nursery. Getting to know the staff, getting to know the areas and the routines, and also to help us develop a relationship of trust with that family which assists the child in settling into nursery.

We ask parents to complete an “All about me” book to explain to us as much information as they can about their child, and that also then helps the child to settle into nursery and feel part of the centre.

On a daily basis we will provide a daily diary, which is a good communication tool for parents and again, helps the strength in that relationship with home and that is of paramount importance for us. I feel that if you have had two or three children in the family through the nursery and been part of the family’s life here then you’ve shared an awful lot of your excitements and your challenges with us and you’ve been a real privilege to be allowed to be part of that family’s life for a while. What we need to install for children to see is how important that is, which then gives the child the feeling of security and trust when they’re here.

Peter Rowe: As both working parents, there’s an understanding that the majority of his waking hours through the week are spent here and not with us, so we’re really looking for the nursery to lead in terms of the development. So, I feel that I’m looking for the nursery to give me ideas and suggestions on what we can do. Probably a good example of this is the nursery have been sending us email updates of what they’ve been doing, which I find very, very useful. So, for example, they’ve been educating him on signing for different activities like I want to eat or I want to sleep, so we’re then taking that learning cues from the nursery and then using them at home at the same time. So, there’s like a consistency in terms of my child’s learning and development.

Narrator: All staff have a key role to play in understanding and managing the behaviour of babies and young children. Children often experience strong emotions and do not always have the capacity to regulate these emotions for themselves.

Very often children’s behaviour is their way of communicating a need and is reflective of their developmental stage and not meant to be intentionally challenging.

Ruth Eglington: We do have very high expectations of children’s behaviour, we very much recognise that children mirror behaviours that they see in life and we value that we need to ensure that we mirror to them good behaviours. The staff have a major role to play in that they have to be consistently good role models to the children, to each other, to students, to parents and anyone that’s coming in. We also work very closely with the parents in regards to behaviour, through the ethos we have in our centre, we try and promote that with them and discuss with them strategies we use for managing young children’s behaviour.

Narrator: Staff need to be equipped and knowledgeable, both about the possible factors which may effect behaviour and a range of strategies to manage children’s behaviour effectively and appropriately.

Promoting positive behaviour is essentially about supporting the child’s cognitive, emotional, social and physical development.

Narrator: Effective and motivated staff are naturally enthusiastic as they play alongside and support children in their learning. It is through these everyday interactions and relationships that staff help children to develop positive attitudes and a strong desire to learn.

Babies and young children are naturally creative and they benefit immensely from staff who adopt a creative approach as they encourage children to explore their world.

Creating, enriching and enabling environments, indoors and outdoors, which excite, stimulate and encourage children to explore and play will help nurture the child’s curiosity and creativity.

Prof. Colwyn Trevarthen: If you’re wondering what kind of component a practitioner should be I think the ideal component of any kind and it can be a practitioner or not is a familiar person who really treats a baby with playful human respect. That means playful: willing to have fun, looking for a chance to have fun but not showing off because babies are quite sensitive to being down staged, or upstaged, they’re very sensitive to someone going beyond what they can keep up with, so they know when you’re showing off too much. But the thing is you have to be respectful, available and humour, fun and gentle and all of the things,, that a good friend.

Narrator: Reflect on why regular engagement with continuing professional development (CPD) activity is an essential aspect of the role of staff working in early years settings.

As a team what are our CPD priorities? How do we know? What will we do next?

As an individual, what are my CPD priorities? How do I know? What will I do next?

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