Parents as Partners Policy

At Pitter Patter Play Ltd we recognise that our families all have their own unique features and where we refer to parents this includes caregivers where parental permission is given.

At Pitter Patter Play Ltd we welcome all parents as partners and support a two-way sharing of information that helps establish trust and understanding. We are committed to supporting parents in an open and sensitive manner and include them as an integral part of the care and early learning team within the nursery. Working together ensures we can meet the individual needs of the family and child and provide the highest quality of care and education.

For most day to day contact we utilise the Famly App as a communication tool.  This is in addition to verbal handovers at collection and drop off.

The key worker system supports engagement with all parents, and we use strategies to ensure that all parents can contribute to their child’s learning and development.

We ask parents to contribute to initial assessments of children’s starting points on entry and they are kept well informed about their children’s progress. We encourage parents to support and share information about their children’s learning and development at home and the key worker seeks to engage them in guiding their child’s development at home too.

The key worker system ensures all practitioners use effective, targeted strategies and interventions to support learning that match most children’s individual needs.

Our policy is to:

• Recognise and support parents as their child’s first and most important educators and to welcome them into the life of the nursery
• Generate confidence and encourage parents to trust their own instincts and judgement regarding their own child
• Welcome all parents into the nursery at any time and provide an area where parents can speak confidentially with us as required.
• Welcome nursing mothers. The nursery will make available a private area whenever needed to offer space and privacy to nursing mothers
• Ensure nursery documentation and communications are provided in different and accessible formats to suit each parent’s needs, e.g. Braille, multi-lingual, electronic communications
• Ensure that all parents are aware of the nursery’s policies and procedures. A detailed parent prospectus will be provided and our full policy documents will be available to parents at all times on the nursery website
• Maintain regular contact with parents to help us to build a secure and beneficial working relationship for their children
• Support parents in their own continuing education and personal development including helping them to develop their parenting skills and inform them of relevant conferences, workshops and training, where required
• Create opportunities for parents to talk to other adults in a secure and supportive environment through such activities as open days, parents’ evenings and a parents’ forum
• Inform parents about the range and type of activities and experiences provided for children, the daily routines of the setting, the types of food and drinks provided for children and events through the nursery communications app

• Operate a key worker system to enable parents to establish a close working relationship with a named practitioner and to support two-way information sharing about each child’s individual needs, both in nursery and at home. When a new child starts nursery, the parents are given the name of their key worker and an explanation of the key worker role.  This information is updated as the child transitions through the setting

• Actively encourage parents to contribute to children’s learning through sharing observations, interests and experiences from home. This may be verbally, sharing photographs or in written form

• Provide opportunities and support for all parents to contribute their own skills, knowledge and interests to the activities of the nursery, including signposting to relevant services, agencies and training opportunities

• Inform all parents of the systems for registering queries, compliments, complaints or suggestions, and to check that these systems are understood by parents.
• Make sure all parents have access to our written complaints procedure
• Share information about the curriculum for Wales, specifically the Curriculum for funded non-maintained nursery settings, young children’s learning in the nursery, how parents can further support learning at home and where they can access further information
• Provide a written contract between the parent(s) and the nursery regarding conditions of acceptance and arrangements for payment
• Respect the family’s religious and cultural backgrounds and beliefs and accommodate any special requirements wherever possible and practical to do so
• Inform parents how the nursery supports children with special educational needs/ additional learning needs and disabilities
• Find out the needs and expectations of parents. We will do this through regular feedback via questionnaires, suggestion system and encouraging parents to review working practices. We will evaluate any responses and use these to inform our annual quality of care review, promote nursery practice, policy and staff development
• Following a review of the quality of care, we will prepare a report within 28 days. A copy of the report in an appropriate format will be made available to parents when requested.

This Policy was adopted on	Signed on Behalf of Pitter Patter Play Ltd	Date for review
15/07/2024		15/07/2025