by: Happiness - 28-07-10 23:32
Please could you give me your views on home visits for new children. Do they work best before or after the child starts?
I'd also like to know what the process is for inviting new children to start in group.
Thanks
by: allie
Hi Happiness,
We do home visits as part of out transition programme before a child starts the nursery. In my opinion it is best before the child starts a setting. Two practitioners visit the family - one being the Key Person. It is an ideal opprotunity to find out the child's interests and getting to know them in an environment that is familar and secure to them.
It's also an ideal opportunity to get to speak to the family about the child's needs - what is likely to comfort them when they are distressed , any allergies, what motivates them, any schemas and their input for the first seperation and how best to support this. After this meeting practitioners are well placed to devise a transition programme that would support the needs of that child and their family into the setting.
We are implementing a new transition programme for children starting in September. As well as the home visit we are offering a minium of 3 transition sesions (more if required) dependent on how the child adjusts. Each visit lasts 1 hour and gives the child (and family) a taster of what is offered from Child Initiated Play to family group times.
Hope this helps,
allie:)
by: Happiness
Thanks Allie, your info was very informative. Can I ask if your transition visits are carried out before the childs start date? I'm wondering that If a new funded child was due to start say at the begining of september how could they access their allocated hours if only an hourly visit was in place first?
Nicky
by: allie
Hi,
I work in a L.A maintained nursery so we operate a little different to the PVI sectors. Our home visits are offered the first week of term when the nursery is quite and before the child is due to start. Our transition sessions will run from the second week of term, before the child's provisional start date. As for funding etc i really can't comment on that as the schools burser and nursery teacher may attend to that.
This is our first transition programme for the nursery - following the footsteps of a sucessful transition programme into year R for many years!! We using the opportunity to also engage parents and promote the importance of speech, langauge and communication (a good link to the ECaT programme we are involved in).
It is also the first time of offering 15 hours of flexi educare - up until the holidays we offerd 12.5 hours. Big changes and a learning curve lies ahead! Watch this space!!!!!
Hope this helps,
allie:)