Policies and Procedures

Our setting will work with children, parents and the community to ensure the rights and safety of children, young people and vulnerable adults. Our Safeguarding Policy is based on the three key commitments of the Early Years Alliance Safeguarding Children Policy. We carry out the following procedures to ensure we meet the three key commitments of the Alliance Safeguarding Children Policy, which incorporates responding to child protection concerns.

We are committed to ensuring that any personal data we hold about you and your child is protected in accordance with data protection laws and is used in line with your expectations.

This privacy notice explains what personal data we collect, why we collect it, how we use it and how we protect it.

Further Information:
On 25th May 2018 the government made legal changes to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). For more information on data protection and how this change could affect you, please visit the government website below.

For any queries on the information we hold at the setting, please feel free to speak to a member of staff who will be happy to assist you.

General Data Protection Regulation - Gov.uk 

We actively promote inclusion, equality of opportunity, the valuing of diversity and British values.

Under the Equality Act 2010, which underpins standards of behaviour and incorporates both British and universal values, we have a legal obligation not to directly or indirectly discriminate against, harass or victimise those with protected characteristics. We make reasonable adjustments to procedures, criteria and practices to ensure that those with protected characteristics are not at a substantial disadvantage. As we are in receipt of public funding we/I also have a public sector equality duty to eliminate unlawful discrimination, advance equality of opportunity, foster good relations and publish information to show compliance with the duty.

It is our intention to make our setting accessible to children and families from all sections of the local community. We aim to ensure that all sections of our community have access to the setting through open, fair and clearly communicated procedures.

Further Information:

The Equality Act 2010 legally protects people from discrimination in the workplace and in wider society.

It replaced previous anti-discrimination laws with a single Act, making the law easier to understand and strengthening protection in some situations. It sets out the different ways in which it’s unlawful to treat someone.

Find out more using the government website below.

Equality Act 2010 - Gov.uk

We believe that children flourish best when their personal, social and emotional needs are understood, supported and met and where there are clear, fair and developmentally appropriate expectations for their behaviour.

As children develop, they learn about boundaries, the difference between right and wrong, and to consider the views and feelings, and needs and rights, of others and the impact that their behaviour has on people, places and objects. The development of these skills requires adult guidance to help encourage and model appropriate behaviours and to offer intervention and support when children struggle with conflict and emotional situations. In these types of situations key staff can help identify and address triggers for the behaviour and help children reflect, regulate and manage their actions. We appoint two members of staff as behaviour coordinators to oversee and advise on the team’s responses to challenging behaviour.

The behaviour co - ordinators at the setting are:

Amy Parsonson and Naomi Long.

We believe that the health and safety of children is of paramount importance. We make our setting a safe and healthy place for children, parents, staff and volunteers.

We aim to make children, parents, staff and volunteers aware of health and safety issues and to minimise the hazards and risks to enable the children to thrive in a healthy and safe environment.

Our members of staff responsible for health and safety is:

At St Mary’s Day Nursery we provide all children attending an ‘online learning journal’ through the platform of ‘Tapestry’, which records observations, photos and videos and also provides an opportunity for parents to comment and add their own observations to their own child’s journal.  This helps to provide a strong partnership between the setting and home as the children develop from when they first attend the playgroup through to when they leave to attend Primary School (or for any other reasons if before this time). Tapestry is a safe and secure online resource used by many early years settings nationally and we have a tapestry policy to ensure it is used and manged appropriately.

Further information on tapestry can be found here:

Tapestry Guide and Information for Parents

Social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, are now the communication form of choice amongst young people, parents and professionals alike, providing them with a powerful voice to express opinions, contact friends and share multimedia content at little to no cost. For this very reason, St Mary’s Day Nursery have developed a social networking group on Facebook as a contemporary means of establishing lines of communication and engaging with our parents and community. The Facebook account will be used to notify our members about upcoming news and events.

Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) provide excellent information and support regarding online safety. For more information please visit there website.

www.thinkyouknow.co.uk

Food Hygeine

Here at St Mary's Day Nursery we pride ourselves on providing our children with a wide range of home cooked nutritious foods and snacks which are made fresh onsite, by our Nursery cook, Alison Morton, in our nursery kitchen. We cater for all special diets, allergies and dietary requirements.

We provide and/or serve food for children on the following basis :

Snacks.

Meals.

Packed lunches.

We maintain the highest possible food hygiene standards with regard to the purchase, storage, preparation and serving of food.

We are registered as a food provider with the local authority Environmental Health Department and have maintained our 5* food hygiene rating for years.

Our daily menus are displayed outside the classrooms daily with a complete list of allergen information. Please ask a member of staff for your own copy if you wish.