Policies & Procedures

At The Old School House Nurseries, we have a dedicated team of trained and professional cooks that cater for all allergy and dietary requirements. If your child has a diagnosed allergy, intolerance or dietary preference, extra provisions and additional steps will be put in place to cater to your child’s needs and requirements, supporting inclusion for all children and families at our nurseries.

At The Old School House Nurseries our practitioners build wonderful relationships with our parents, children and families however our policies do not allow for our employees to provide babysitting services outside of work for families who have established relationships with our employees through our nurseries. Should parents and our employees choose to not follow our policies, The Old School House Nurseries does not accept any liability for private arrangements outside of the nurseries.

Social media is a large part of our society and we love to share all of the exciting and wonderful things we get up to with our followers and audience, however we always gain written permission from our children’s parents prior to sharing images on our social media pages. We kindly ask our parents and families to please respect our nursery policies by refraining from making connections via social media with any of our employees unless a significant relationship was there prior to joining The Old School House Nurseries.

At The Old School House Nurseries our practitioners, management team and directors are dedicated to providing equality of opportunity and anti discriminatory practice for all staff, children and families according to their individual needs. We have created nurturing environments that do not support or allow discrimination on the grounds of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage/ civil partnership, pregnancy, race, religion or beliefe, sex or sexual orientation.

The Old School House Nurseries operates CCTV surveillance for the intended purposes of promoting the health and safety of children, staff and visitors in our care and also protecting our nurseries property and resources. For the safety of our children and our team, our CCTV footage is held in compliance with our policies and procedures, the ICO and also the Data Protection Act. Our management teams may review the CCTV footage on occasions such as an accident or incident occurring in the nursery.

We believe that children flourish best when they feel safe and secure, having their needs met by supportive practitioners who act as good role models, showing children respect and valuing their individual personalities. Children at our nurseries are supported through co-regulation, where practitioners and children work together towards a common purpose, including finding ways to resolve upsets and returning to balance, leading on to a path of self regulation and positive emotional wellbeing.

Here at The Old School House Nurseries, we actively promote British values and encourage children through praising positive, caring and polite behaviour which in turn creates an environment where children learn to respect themselves and other people in their surroundings. 

Communication between the nursery and our parents, through strong parent partnerships, is key to promoting positive behaviour to our children, ensuring we are supporting one another with the same approach at nursery and at home. 

We support and implement a Positive Behaviour Policy through all ages and stages of a child’s development at nursery, this also includes our approach to biting too. Biting can be common through a stage of a child’s development as a way to communicate their feelings and needs. It is important that through this stage our families are willing to work with our nurseries and practitioners to address the biting incidents, allowing us to work with children to prevent biting incidents from occurring again. 

This can be upsetting to other children involved in biting incidents, practitioners will always comfort children, providing first aid if needed and notify parents of the incident too. 

At The Old School House Nurseries, we strive to provide the highest quality of care and education for our children and families, we believe that all parents and children are treated with care, courtesy and respect. 
Parent partnerships are at the heart of our nurseries and we hope that at all times parents are happy and satisfied with the quality and service we provide, and we encourage parents to voice their appreciation to staff where you feel needed. Our staff always love to hear when they have gone above and beyond.

Our nursery managers always welcome any suggestions from parents on how we can improve our services. We encourage parents to contact our supportive and understanding management team with any concerns our parents may have so that we can work together to resolve concerns or issues effectively. 

We also request that any formal complaints are put in writing via email, addressed to our nursery managers, where a thorough investigation will be conducted by our management team to explore your concerns further, with an outcome given to our parents in an immediate time scale.

At The Old School House Nurseries we adopt daily routines in our nurseries for consistency with our children, providing safe spaces for our children to rest and sleep during the day. Our practitioners will have regular contact with our children’s parents to discuss sleep routines and adopt sleep routines from home where possible in the nursery. We encourage parents to communicate their concerns or wishes in regards to their children’s sleep patterns and duration.

Once your child has reached the age where they will transition to preschool, our practitioners will discuss your child's sleep routines with you where necessary. 

The Old School House Nurseries are vigilant during the recruitment process, aiming to ensure that all people working with children and looking after children as suitable to fulfil the requirement of their role. Our nurseries are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of our children. We have effective systems in place to ensure that practitioners and other members of our wider team having regular contact with children are suitable, through such measures as obtaining an enhanced DBS for all employees, an in-depth two stage interview process, obtaining two independent references that are satisfactory from previous employment as well as amongst other check that are completed prior to employment beginning with The Old School House Nurseries. 

Our settings are inclusive and ensure that all children, families, staff and visitors are welcomed. We aim to embrace spiritual well being and celebrate families and staff key events.Children’s physical well being is supported through our carefully planned curriculum programme, which supports all types of gross and fine motor play, both inside and outside. We provide nutritionally balanced meals for our children and support them to make healthy choices in regards to their physical health too. 

Personal hygiene is supported in our nursery with our children of all ages, educating our children on the reasons for hand washing regularly, tooth brushing and self care routines. 

Our children learn through play in their environments, with our practitioners providing a wealth of opportunities to learn in activities. An integral part of our child centred approach is the support that this gives to our children's mental and emotional wellbeing, providing a safe environment that allows children to express themselves and their emotions confidently .

Our practitioners support children’s self regulation through carefully planned activities and resources for our children to access, modelling calming strategies and providing opportunities. 

The Old School House Nurseries promotes the wellbeing of our children, families and practitioners, taking the right steps to prevent further risk of infection. Our policies are in line with Public Health England’s Guidance on Infection Control in Schools and other Childcare Settings (2016), however we do exclude Hand Foot and Mouth infections to prevent further risk of spread and infection to other children in our settings.

Whilst we appreciate that children do suffer with common colds and illnesses, we kindly ask parents to assess whether their child is well enough to attend nursery during this time. 

Our team of dedicated practitioners will always provide care and attention to children who may be feeling under the weather, however if your child does not appear well enough to be in nursery a member of our management team will contact the child’s parents to collect from nursery. Vigorous cleaning routines take place in our nurseries by our practitioners and nursery cleaners to ensure we are doing the best that we can to prevent spreading illnesses further.

We follow strict guidelines when dealing with medication of any kind in the nursery, only administering medication that has been prescribed by a doctor, dentist, nursery practitioner or a pharmacist. Our first aid trained practitioners will only administer medication that has a prescription label or a letter accompanying the medication from a medical professional.

Parents must be aware that when providing medication to the nursery, please allow time to complete medication forms with our management team before leaving. Our management team do reserve the right to refuse medication if they do not believe they have the correct information provided to administer to your child whilst at nursery.

The Old School House Nurseries provide and maintain safe and healthy working conditions, equipment and systems of work for all our employees and a safe learning environment in which children can learn and are cared for. We have a skilled maintenance team of  professionals that are dedicated to maintaining our safe environments for play, as well as providing our practitioners with regular training on health and safety.

The Old School House Nurseries operates a ‘No Smoking Policy’ for practitioners and visitors, prohibiting smoking on the nursery property.

At The Old School House Nurseries, we appreciate that it is important for our families to operate during all time

Our mealtimes are happy and social occasions for children and staff alike. The Old School House Nurseries promote a shared and enjoyable experience full of positive interactions and promote healthy eating habits, whilst supervised by our practitioners during these times. 

We are committed to offering children healthy, nutritious and balanced meals and snacks which meet the individual needs and requirements of each child. 

We provide breakfast, lunch and dinner during our day sessions, met with snack times in the morning and afternoon too. 
Although meals are provided during privately funded sessions, we do welcome parents who wish to provide a package lunch to support their child’s eating at nursery. Please note that all meals provided from home cannot be reheated at nursery and must follow the guidelines of our Healthy Eating Policy, promoting a balanced diet to all children.

At The Old School House Nurseries, we work with children, parents, external agencies and the community to ensure the welfare and safety of all children, providing them the best start in life, putting children’s welfare and safety at the centre of everything we do. We support children’s right to be treated with respect, be provided with the opportunity to thrive and to be safe from any form of abuse.
 
Safeguarding Children is at the foundation to all of our policies and procedures.
Our employees, practitioners and wider team receive regular in-depth Safeguarding Children training, upskilling our teams on how to best safeguard children, identify signs of abuse and how to report significant events or concerns to our Designated Safeguarding Lead at each of  our nursery settings. In order to best protect our children’s welfare, a referral may be made to statutory child protection agencies, child services or police. Where necessary our management team will discuss our concerns before a referral is made, however if a child is at a greater risk of harm a discussion with parents may not always take place prior to the referral. 

Other ways in which our nurseries strive to safeguard our children effectively, is by ensuring safe and secure spaces are provided for children to play and explore. Risks assessments are conducted throughout the day to ensure that our environments are suitable for children when accessing indoors and outdoors too.