Focus on quality standards – learning from healthcare
Jamie Crew, director and partner at Nidum Nannies
Monday, October 18, 2021
The co-founder of Nidum Nannies - who has 23 years’ experience in child health - reflects on what early years can learn from the health sector
As a Paediatric Nurse I've worked for over a decade in children’s A&E, held leadership positions in Child and Family health in the NHS, worked at Health Education England and am still a practising Registered Paediatric Nurse Leader in the independent Healthcare sector.
Healthcare, both independently and in the NHS, has rightly faced considerable scrutiny historically around the importance of a quality focussed approach to leadership, recruitment and care, rather than solely financial considerations.
Leadership and recruitment have been related to patient safety outcomes for years in healthcare.
Put simply and decisively, providers must reflect on their own leadership and the impact their role modelling is having on staff, registrants, the delivery of service and ultimately the quality of childcare provided. In order to recruit the best staff, we must scrutinise our processes and ask ourselves why candidates should apply to us.
The emphasis on families receiving excellence in childcare provision regardless of provider could not be more relevant and important in the early years sector.
The pandemic has had a considerable impact on the childcare sector seeing the closure of providers, but also the development of nanny agencies and start-up childminding services.
Nidum Nannies are one of these start-ups, but through many years of research and business planning share the concerns of the Regulation Matters (RM) movement. Familiar to many of us in the sector RM was established in 2006 with a focus on campaigning for the professionalism of the nanny sector by calling for the registration of nannies and regulation of nanny agencies.
The message of “focus on quality” seems cliched, but with businesses financially challenged and families being targeted by the sector offering a variety of childcare options we must have the child at the heart of our business decisions if we are to offer quality-based childcare.
Families must consider the motives of start-ups and learn about the background of all providers assuring themselves that businesses have demonstrated due diligence and integrity in the way they approach families and how childcare workers are selected, employed, or placed.
Having the experience and academic underpinnings in child health and early years education, understanding what’s important to families and more importantly children, must be held above making any financial profit.
At Nidum Nannies we are very much looking forward to working more closely with Regulation Matters and welcome collaborating with colleagues in the early years sector to enable us to provide quality childcare throughout the sector with the focus on the child and family.
To read more about Nidum Nannies and their background in Child Health and Early Years Education visit www.nidumnannies.com
Further reading
The Kings Fund (2020) Making the case for quality improvement: lessons for NHS boards and leaders
https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/making-case-quality-improvement
Harvard Business Review. Organizational Culture: Creating a Culture of Quality. (2014) Ashwin Srinivasan and Bryan Kurey
https://hbr.org/2014/04/creating-a-culture-of-quality
Nursing Management, Workplace culture and patient outcomes: What’s the connection? (2017) Hahtela, McCormack, Doran, Paavilainen, Slater, Helminen and Suominen
