knowledge of the law and the ability to train her staff for free.
The National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) runs a 'train the trainer' programme to enable nursery owners, managers and safeguarding leads to bring their safeguarding training in-house.
Leah Chikamba, operational manager for Big Life nurseries in Manchester, attended along with another senior member of staff. They will train 70 staff at the seven nurseries in the group over the next year.
The advanced safeguarding programme is a combination of face-to-face, distance and online training. Her one-day face-to-face session was delivered by Jo Baranek, an NDNA lead early years advisor, and as well as the core training it involved hearing several case studies and sharing good practice with other trainees.
Topics included being able to effectively deliver safeguarding training for all staff in the nursery, how to carry out safeguarding inductions with new staff, ensuring a robust safeguarding policy and procedure is in place, and how to respond appropriately to any allegations made against a member of the team.
Ms Chikamba says, 'One new thing it raised for me was more detail about DBS clearance, and we'll now be incorporating these criminal checks into our yearly appraisal. Our ability to help safeguard our staff has been improved, as well as that of safeguarding the children.
'There is often a gap between staff starting their job and receiving safeguarding training as the council has a waiting list for this course, but now we can bridge this gap. It also means when staff do come to do their safeguarding training on the council course they will be better prepared for it.
'We have saved considerable costs as we can train the 70 staff ourselves, and I feel more confident talking to staff about how they are dealing with safeguarding issues.'
To take part, you must have completed a basic safeguarding training course.
- For more information or to book, call the NDNA 01484 40 70 70 or email training@ndna.org.uk.
