Precious Smiles (Goodmayes branch)

Education Offer

Overview

Precious Smiles welcomes children of all abilities and backgrounds. We believe the diverse backgrounds of children make Precious Smiles are richer learning and rewarding working environment. We believe children can teach us a lot and develop our abilities as practitioners.

Supporting children with SEND is a rewarding experience, and brings the Setting closer to families and parents. Partnership work, good communication and well integrated support strategies are at the core of our practice. We are a Setting that is confident to embrace children with various needs. Precious Smiles has high expectations for all children’s developmental journey with us and supports progress from individual starting points.

Specific/Additional Needs are not seen as restrictions, rather an opportunity to flourish at innovative work practises, and pioneer better ways to work with children and families.

Precious Smiles is a semi-detached triple storey period property, which still retains many of its original features and character of the property. Precious Smiles is a beautiful setting maintained to a high standard in all aspects of the facilities it offers children and parents.

There are a number of free parking places on the road, and two further places for the setting. The setting operates on a staggered entrance and exit of children on order to maintain the calm and serene atmosphere of the road.

The setting has five themed rooms and a parents meeting room and lobby area. The rooms have large windows which lets in a lot of natural light. Period colours have been maintained throughout the property, with the choices of colours reflecting the children’s preferences. There is polished wooden floors on the ground floor and parquet in the eating, entrance and downstairs bathrooms. The other bathrooms have large natural stone tiles, and are well lit with soft lighting. The rest of the property has light coloured carpets and bright rugs.

The setting also has a dedicated Sensory Room with sensory light shows, water feature with soothing water and bubble sounds, treasure baskets, large cushioned ‘snuggly’ areas and a range of sensory room resources. In addition, we have a beautiful outdoor play area with swings, slides, gliders, climbing frame, cars, and tricycles.

The outdoor area also has a garden with a range of plants and fruit trees and new sensory forest play area is being developed to further extend outdoor experiences and learning. The outdoor area has natural grass, and a range of mini beast habitats and bird’s nests for children to learn about and explore.

There are further opportunities for water play, sand play, mark making, sound station, sensory wall, communication ‘hotspots’ and mud play outdoors. Our outdoor space is a key component in the delivery of the EYFS. Careful consideration and planning is utilised to support learning outdoors across the three ‘prime’ and four ‘specific’ areas.

Moreover, Precious Smiles plans trips linked to key learning objectives and offers many activities to support children’s interests including cooking, role play and open ended sensory play. Precious Smiles invites parents and professionals from the community to support learning about the community and topics like “People who Help us”.

Precious Smiles is an Ofsted registered Early Years Setting and part of a quality assurance programme, manged by PACEY (Professional Association for Childcare and Early Years) The Setting is open Monday to Friday 7:45 – 5.15pm term time only for 38 weeks of the year. There are plans to extend the provision further for holidays and wrap around provision to support working parents, including breakfast clubs and after session clubs. The setting has a number of highly maintained bathrooms and ‘down time’ areas for children’s use, and a vibrant eating area with excellent display of healthy eating and exercise displays to further support our ‘healthy lifestyle’ strategy for children.

There are three fire exits on the ground floor. A further side exit from the outdoor areas. Fire alarms are fitted across all three floors of the building and regular maintenance checks and fire drills are carried out. All Staff are have first aid training, and the Setting Manager is a qualified Lifesaving Skills Trainer (British Heart Foundation). In addition, all staff undergo rigorous health and safety, safeguarding, risk assessment and hazard awareness training as part of the induction process.

Precious Smiles has enjoyed OUTSTANDING feedback from the first term it opened, both from parents, professionals and most importantly the children that come here. We regularly take feedback form parents, children and the training organisations we work with. We have had a waiting list, with children waiting for up to two years for a place. Our small nurturing setting is very popular, so parents register their children before they turn one years old in order to have a place when they are two! We are currently waiting keenly for our next Ofsted inspection and have plans to create more places for all the children waiting to get in.

Identifying children's needs

Precious Smiles collects data on all children before they start with us. All forms that parents complete prior to the Admissions meetings helps us gain valuable information about the child. Moreover, in the first two to four weeks with us, children are closely observed and monitored in order to complete an initial assessment. We use this information as a ‘starting point’ for all children and track progress from this initial entry assessment. Children who transfer from another early years setting will have assessments transferred to us to further inform our initial assessment on a child.

Once the admissions process is complete, all children are allocated a key person on arrival to support them through the transition period and support children and parents during separation (and associated anxiety). It is the role of the key person to liaise with the child’s parents at drop off, pick up and other scheduled times. Management provide further support session to parents to ease through the settling-in period and fully engage in our learning programmes. Parents are encouraged to communicate with use on a daily basis in person, via text messages, email and telephone calls.

Children’s progress is closely monitored. Each child has their own e-file and learning journey which includes observations, tracking information about their progress across the seven areas of learning and development within the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). Children’s learning journeys are available for parents to look at any time, but particularly on parents meeting days, to discuss reports, assessments and next steps goals for each child.

In addition to the child’s learning journey we also undertake the 2 year progress check and EYFS Profile assessment for those children who stay until Reception Year with us, although we encourage all children to seek a full time school placement as soon as they turn 4 years old (we do however provide a placement until a child is 5 years old if we have vacancies).

The statutory duty on all Early Years settings to undertake two year checks allows the identification of delay or difficulties in the three prime areas, and an opportunity to discuss with parents and inform them about their child’s progress to date. This assessment is shared with parents and achievements are celebrated and areas of further development or next steps are discussed. An Individual Plan is adopted to work together to achieve these goals until the next review meeting in 6 weeks’ time. We may also discuss with parents whether it would be appropriate to refer their child to other services such as Speech and Language Therapy, Redbridge Child Development Centre or Educational Psychology Service. Children with additional needs will be under constant supervision for further development and improvement, if children do not make required progress at appropriate timescales then external advice maybe sought, after consultation with parents.

We aim to keep parents fully involved in their children’s learning and development and the progress each child has made. Written assessments are discussed and issued to parents every term. Termly thematic work is also highlighted in newsletters, parent workshops and written communication and “Parents Notices” via email and phone messages and alerts.

Dedicated contacts

Precious Smiles has a designated Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCo), who is happy to discuss any concerns about your child’s specific needs and how we can work to support you and your child. The designated person oversees all the support for children with additional needs and disabilities and will work closely with the family and any partner agencies involved with the family. In addition, we will also support the delivery of Individual Plans in consultation with parents, the relevant lead agency and other stakeholders.

All queries related to SEND should be directed to the administrator at the above contact details.  

Involving children and their families

• Parenting advice
• Regular contact between parents/carers and the setting
• Planning and review meetings
• Advice on how to support learning at home
• Partnership work/consultation with relevant specialist agency

Range of support available

• Partnership working with other professionals
• Support for communication needs
• Additional support strategies
• EYFS Curriculum planning differentiation
• Support for health needs
• Specific teaching interventions
• Support for behaviour

Measuring children's progress

• Entry Assessments – clear starting points to measure progress from.
• Weekly observations and records of progress
• Termly assessments
• 6 weekly review cycles
• Progress tracking across all 17 ELG areas in addition the characteristics of effective learning
• Next steps goals – progress monitoring and planning for further steps
• Planning and review meetings
• Advice on how to support learning at home
• Parenting advice and sign posting
• Regular contact between parents/carers and the setting
• Home visits (if required)
• Parents workshops
• Settling in
• Newsletters
• Questionnaires/feedback from parents
• External specialists advice
• Regular monitoring and support by EYCIT.

Support and training for school staff

Most senior member of staff takes leadership for all SEND provision, internal training, and updates on best practice and cascading current policy guidance to staff.

MSc Management, Specialist Training in Behaviour Management and further training is scheduled as part of ongoing professional development.

Accessibility of the school

We are partially accessible at present, however we are planning for full disability access when we acquire our next site.

Inclusion

Children with Special Educational Needs or disabilities are encouraged and included in all activities, outdoor trips and supported to make equal contributions to group learning and celebrations e.g. “show and Tell”, “Diversity Week” and fancy dress days such as “World Book Day” and all cultural celebration events.

Risk Assessments are carried out to increase hazard awareness, implement risk reduction measures, and ensure the safety of all children.

Transition arrangements

Precious Smiles collects as much information as possible before and after Admissions meetings. In order to get to know your child we collect extensive information from parents and settling in programmes are tailored to individual children’s needs. This will include any medical, allergy and special dietary needs/requirements as well as children’s play and soothing preferences.

All parents have an opportunity to meet staff, have a guided tour of the Setting and a comprehensive discussion about how we deliver the EYFS and how this will be adapted to all children and their specific needs. We specialise in supporting children who have EAL and support bilingualism through our multi-lingual staff. We also promote early literacy, communication and language development and enjoyment of maths through play. We want all children to have a good start and be school ready. We hope that by the time children leave our Setting they will have a confident grasp of the national literacy and mathematical development strategies. We get excellent feedback from the parents of children who are at school, who are already advanced in phonetic decoding, segmenting, blending and much more. Preschool aged children learn to read whilst they are with us, so by the time they leave for school at 4 years old they are already ahead of their peers.

Any children who have identified special educational needs and/or a disability will have a support plan and consultations will be made with relevant partner agencies and Early Years Team if required.

We also meet with families and children as many times as required to ensure transitions to our Setting is smooth as possible. We have a flexible settling-in process, and understand all children are unique and require different time frames to separate from their loved ones. We have a comprehensive transition procedure which we follow when the children are ready to move on to school. We request parental permission to share information with their child’s next school or provide reports as and when requested by the school with parental consent.

Furthermore, we visit with the children to most schools who have good transitionary arrangements. We encourage parents to share their children’s Learning Journey Records with their new teachers and we provide the school with an assessment and transition document which highlights key information about each child. We have similar policies for children moving into our setting from another provider, and will try to ensure a good transfer of information from the previous provider, after appropriate consents have been obtained. In all cases we are dependent on schools and other provider’s cooperation in this process for the benefit of the child.

Support and training for parents and carers

• Parent consultation
• Links with children centres
• SENCo
• Coffee mornings with parents
• Parent workshops
• Training and employment opportunities, benefits advice, sign posting to other services.