On 1 February I had my very first assessment on maintaining a healthy, safe and secure environment for children. The main observations were on a safe environment for the children in my nursery class, using correct procedures that are required by law. This involved looking at the indoor and outdoor environment that I am responsible for, and checking for hazards that could potentially cause children harm.
The assessor looked at the fire procedures around the building and at the school's policies. Another thing which was quite new to me was the risk assessment. She needed to see records of risks - for example, what could happen on an outing with the children, looking at how all risks could ultimately be eliminated.
I then participated in a Professional Discussion. The aim of this was to demonstrate to the assessor how much I understood and knew about the practices in the school where I am employed. There were a few simple questions about the administration of medicines, first aid, recording of an accident and storage of cleaning products. All in all, the assessment took about two hours and was quite straightforward.
The health and safety unit also had a written element which involved writing about first aid and children's allergies.
After half-term we returned to college. This session was on the subject of portfolio building and reviewed all the written work our group had completed so far. We placed this work into a portfolio and cross-referenced it.
Cross-referencing includes observations, elements of knowledge and understanding, an evidence log sheet and professional discussion. In line with this we numbered the pages and put in a code that links evidence methods together.
Fortunately, this is now all done and I am completing the development chart I started a couple of weeks ago. This covers the full age range and is presented as a bar chart. It has involved referencing books such as The Growing Child by Helen Bee (Harper Collins) and 13 to 19 by Wendy Grant (Element Books), and the CACHE course handbook, published by Heinemann. As practitioners working in varied types of settings we all have different insights into development and the aim of the chart is to pull all the key points together.
