At CJ’s Little Pickles we value our staff highly. We believe that personal and professional development is essential for maintaining the delivery of high-quality care and learning for children in their early years. It underpins all aspects of positive interactions and activities planned for children.
In the interests of the nursery, the children, their families and the individual we give every staff member the opportunity to develop their skills to their maximum and to broaden their knowledge and skills in caring for children. A comprehensive and targeted programme of professional development ensures practitioners are constantly improving their understanding and practice. High-quality professional supervision is provided, based on individual performance related targets, consistent and sharply focused observation and evaluations of the impact of staff’s practice.
We ensure that 75% of staff are qualified to Level 3 (or equivalent) or above in childcare and education or Early Years Educator. Other staff working at the nursery will either be qualified to Level 2 or undertaking training.
We strongly promote continuous professional development and all staff have individual training records and training plans to enhance their skills and expertise, which are based on discussions at supervision meetings and appraisal meetings.
To facilitate the development of staff we:
• Coach, mentor, lead and offer encouragement and support to achieve a high level of morale and motivation
• Promote teamwork through ongoing communication, involvement and a no blame culture to enhance nursery practice
• Provide opportunities for delegation based on skills and expertise to offer recognition and empower staff
• Encourage staff to contribute ideas for change within the nursery and hold regular staff meetings and team meetings to develop these ideas. Regular meetings are also held to discuss strategy, policy and activity planning
• Encourage staff to further their experience and knowledge by attending relevant external training courses
• Encourage staff to pass on their knowledge to those who are less experienced and share knowledge from external training with small groups of staff within the nursery
• Provide regular in-house training relevant to the needs of the nursery
• Carry out regular quarterly supervision meetings with all staff. These provide opportunities for staff to discuss any issues particularly concerning children’s development or well-being including child protection concerns, identify solutions to address issues as they arise and receive coaching to improve their personal effectiveness. Staff appraisals are carried out annually where objectives and action plans for staff are set out, while also identifying training needs according to their individual needs
• Develop a training plan that sets out the aims and intended outcomes of any training, addressing both the qualification and continuous professional development needs of the nursery and individual staff.
• Carry out training need analyses for all individual staff and the team as a whole
• Promote a positive learning culture within the nursery
• Carry out full evaluations of all training events and use these to evaluate the training against the aims set to enable the development of future training programmes to improve effectiveness and staff learning
• Provide inductions to welcome all new staff.
• Offer ongoing support and guidance