At N Family Club, a new London-based nursery group, care is taken so parents don’t have to spend settling-in sessions filling in forms.
Sarah Mackenzie, education director, says, ‘At the settling-in sessions, there shouldn’t be a large amount of paperwork for parents to fill in. Often the time isn’t really about bonding because parents are just filling in forms. Getting these administrative things out the way means then you can have the face-to-face time.’
Along with this paperwork, which is filled in by parents remotely and checked at the home visit, biographies of staff are drip-fed over email before the child starts (eight weeks before arrival, parents will be emailed photos and a profile of the nursery manager, which is followed up with information about the room manager at six weeks, and key person at four).
Home visits and settling in
Like many settings, the key person relationship begins before the child takes up their place with a home visit. Visiting the child in their home environment is a chance to see how confident they are, and how they interact with people at home provides useful context for developing a relationship later in the nursery. The ‘crucial’ visits, which usually last for over an hour, ‘set a personal tone for the relationship’, while the staff member ‘can draw on these memories from a development perspective’ such as ascertaining the level of verbal and non-verbal communication. ‘It’s spending time thinking what makes that child tick, or what their frustrations are,’ Ms Mackenzie says.
Settling-in then happens over a three-month period.
N Family Club is embarking on an expansion programme, with plans for seven more settings. When a new site opens, only a few families arrive per week, to try to ensure that the environment is calm for children and staff. Prospective families are not shown around if children are settling in. Before a new site opens, staff spend a week there getting to know their new colleagues.
Bonding
Staff don’t wear company uniforms in order to encourage parents to see them as individuals. ‘That initial contact and the way the key person is presented are done in quite a specific way. We don’t want staff to come across as just a face, we want parents to get to know them and understand them as a person.’
Parents and staff can also meet in the on-site café (there is one in each purpose-built setting). ‘This is a good thing for relationship-building as well. It’s very much trying to create a friendly team – so they have that deep relationship with the key person’ Ms Mackenzie says.
The company also has parties four times a year, while parents and staff mix at weekend and evening fitness, parenting and cookery classes. ‘Parents and children having fun and laughing is quite important,’ adds Ms Mackenzie.
Training and support
As the key person leads conversations with parents on everything – including difficult subjects – staff are given specific training in how to communicate with them, while the company aims to make its stance on key issues explicit in policies.
For example, if a parent objects to a man changing a nappy, the key person will challenge this with the support of management and the relevant policy. ‘We have a lot of male key people. We are very clear in our policy that we will not grant any request not to be changed by a male member of staff – that is black and white. In our training to staff on parent communications, it is very clear – the parent can buy into what we are as a nursery, or not,’ Ms Mackenzie says.
The company also has an inset day where all staff teams come together for training, while on-the-job mentoring aims to pick up on practice issues.
An online attachment training course forms part of the induction process for new staff, with follow-up coaching sessions to talk about what they have read and how it is linked to what they have observed, using a ‘read, do review’ approach.
The company, which has backing from venture capital firm Pembroke, has also set up a training academy that will offer in-house training in attachment and other areas such as SEND by the end of 2020.
Parents are also offered training materials on attachment and key people make a point of referring to it when, for example, explaining why a child will cry when they are left at the nursery.
‘We tell them they will probably cry, but from an attachment point of view that is quite normal – that is their way of communicating if they are non-verbal. It’s quite important to have that conversation with parents,’ says Ms Mackenzie.
Competency framework
Staff won’t be able to become a key person until they’ve had their competencies and skills assessed against a framework which is available on the staff intranet. ‘We sign off their competencies to be a key person. Having competencies set out makes it easy for people to understand what expectations are. It’s used in probation and supervision – they appraise themselves against it beforehand. It shows how they are meeting key areas,’ Ms Mackenzie says.
nursery overview
Name N Family Club
Number of settings Two (with two due to launch)Established 2017
Locations London
Nursery owner Phil Sunderland
Hopscotch Consultancy Comment: ‘Educators are extremely attentive to each child and their family, spending weeks getting to know them before they fully start. Building relationships that are robust is core.’
