Our Key Person Relationship
We believe every child deserves to have a special relationship with someone within the nursery and our key person approach effectively celebrates this. It provides you and your child with a sense of security.
Developing a secure bond with their key person allows your child to explore and play freely whilst feeling safe within their environment. They will have activities and quality learning experiences planned for them based on their individual needs.
At Tiptoes, we also believe that children settle best when they have a key worker to relate to, who knows them and their parents well, and who can meet their individual needs. We want children to feel safe, stimulated and happy in our nurseries and to feel secure and comfortable with our staff. Parents need to have confidence in both their children’s well-being and their role as active partners with the nursery.
We allocate a key worker before your child starts and the key worker is responsible for settling your child into our nursery and working with you to plan and deliver a personalised plan for the child’s well-being, care and learning.
How does this work?
At Tiptoes your child’s key worker acts as the key contact for you, the parents, and has links with any other carers involved with the child, and co-ordinates the sharing of appropriate information about the child’s development. The key worker is responsible for all developmental records and sharing information on a regular basis with you, the child’s parents, to keep those records up-to-date, reflecting the full picture of the child in our nursery and at home.
The key worker encourages positive relationships between children in her/his key group, spending time with them as a group each day. We provide a back-up key worker so the child and the parents have a key contact in the absence of the child’s key worker. We promote the role of the key worker as the child’s primary carer in our nursery, and as the basis for establishing relationships with other staff and children.
Further Information
- Before a child starts to attend the nursery, we use a variety of ways to provide his/her parents with information. These include written information (including our information leaflets and policies), displays about activities available within the nursery, and a wide range of information on our website at www.tiptoes.co.uk.
- We provide opportunities for the child and his/her parents to visit the nursery.
- We allocate a key worker to each child and his/her family before she/he starts to attend; the key worker welcomes and looks after the child and his/her parents at the child’s first session and during the settling-in process.
- We use pre-start visits and the first session at which a child attends to explain and complete with his/her parents the child’s registration records.
- When a child starts to attend, we explain the process of settling-in with his/her parents and jointly decide on the best way to help the child to settle into the nursery.
- We have an expectation that the parent, carer or close relative, may wish to stay for part of the session during the first few days, gradually taking time away from their child, increasing this as and when the child is able to cope.
- Younger children will take longer to settle in, as will children who have not previously spent time away from home. Children who have had a period of absence may also need their parent to be on hand to re-settle them.
- We judge a child to be settled when they have formed a relationship with their key worker; for example the child looks for the key worker when he/she arrives, goes to them for comfort, and seems pleased to be with them. The child is also familiar with where things are and is pleased to see other children and participate in activities.
- When parents leave, we ask them to say goodbye to their child and explain that they will be coming back, and when.
