OAKFIELD’S LOCAL OFFER
Planning and assessment of the children’s learning and development is extensive and follows the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) guidelines and principles.
All children are offered a wide range of quality educational resources and experiences.
We have a Graduated Approach to supporting children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, (SEND) through a cycle of Assess, Plan, Do, Review.
This is overseen by our Special Educational Needs Coordinator, (SENCO) Catherine Brittain who works closely with the parents, key carers, the nursery director and any other agencies which may be involved.
Our Parents in Partnership ensures we keep our parents informed about their child’s development and progress and also involve them in their child’s learning by asking them to send in ‘WOW’ moments and parents comments each month to put in their child’s file.
Where a dual setting arrangement is in place we encourage parents to use a home to setting book to keep up effective communication. Transport to and from both settings can be arranged if necessary.
We also hold an annual parents evening where parents can come and view their child’s file and discuss their progress/needs with the key carer, our SENCO would also be available on this evening. The children’s files are also available to view in February and October and on request.
Several other workshops for parents take place throughout the year including an EYFS evening, reading and writing and paediatric first aid.
Facilities include, 13 spacious play/classrooms, a separate dining room, 4 kitchens, 5 toileting/changing areas 2 large outdoor play areas a dance studio and our nature nursery. Our dance studio can also be used for physio/speech and language session or to hold Team Around the Child meetings.
90 – 100% of our staff working with the children are fully qualified nursery practitioners or teachers. All our staff are committed to personal professional development and attend many training courses throughout the year, we also have regular in-house training focussing on behaviour management, wellbeing, language and physical development and our SENCO attends a variety of SEND training each year to keep her up to date with the latest policies and procedures.
We have a management team of 4 comprising of Roisin Moriarty who is the Director and would be a parents first port of call when inquiring about the setting, Michelle O’Pray is the General Manager, Fiona Rostron is the Preps Manager and Catherine Brittain is the Under 3’s Manager and also our Senco. You can contact any of the management team for further information regarding our setting.
Oakfield believes that all children have the right to experience and develop alongside their peers no matter what their individual needs.
We are committed to working alongside parents in the provision and to support children’s individual needs enabling us to help children to reach their full potential, we make reasonable adjustments to enable every child to make full use of the nurseries facilities.
All our rooms are bright and spacious with wide doorways, we have height adjustable tables and equipment making our resources accessible to all.
We work with parents and professionals to ensure our environment is suitable for children’s particular needs, reducing noise levels, improving the visual environment by creating quiet areas/ black out tents or a go space. We often use translators for children with English as an additional language and have some staff that speak different languages.
We can also provide our admissions/ induction paperwork in Arial 14 and print on coloured paper which is recommended for parents who may visually impaired.
We work closely with parents/carers to find out as much as we can about a child’s needs and the way it might affect his/her early learning or care needs by:
Providing an in depth Socialising/Induction period.
Providing home visits if needed.
Liaising closely with parents/carers.
Liaising with multiagency professionals.
Reading any reports that have been prepared.
Attending any case review meetings with Doctors, Local Authority and professionals.
Regularly monitoring observations carried out on the child’s
development.
Attending any relevant training.
Children needing additional SEN support will be provided with an Individual Plan (IP) written by the SENCO alongside the child’s parents and key carer, this will be reviewed with the parents every 6-8 weeks.
Depending on each child’s individual needs the SENCO and Key Carer will liaise closely with multi-agency professionals such as Trafford early development (Teds) team, Special educational needs advisory service (Senas) and can provide a place to hold meetings or for speech and language therapy (SALT) and physio sessions if needed.
The EYFS curriculum can be broken down into smaller steps using the Early Support Developmental Journal giving the children a chance to achieve more realistic goals.
When a child has to move groups eg: from Babies to Tweenies and Toddlers, we have an extensive socialising/induction programme between the groups and we involve the parents in each step, carrying out risk assessments and adjustments to ensure the environment is accessible.
When ready to move to school all our children read books, participate in circle time/PSE sessions to talk about the move, their teachers come to visit, we can arrange for accompanied visits if needed and we also have a getting ready for school book. We write reports and liaise closely with the new schools.
