Settling In

At Barnabees Preschool our aim is to work in partnership with parents to help them become familiar with the setting and offer a settled relationship for the child. We know children learn best when they are healthy, safe and secure, we build positive relationships with parents to ensure we can meet children’s individual needs and help them settle quickly into nursery life.

All our staff know about the importance of building strong attachments with children. They are trained to recognise the different stages of attachment and use this knowledge to support children and families settling into the preschool. 

Our settling in procedure includes:

• Allocating a key person to each child and his/her family, before he/she starts to attend. The key person welcomes and looks after the child, ensuring that their care is tailored to meet their individual needs. He/she offers a settled relationship for the child and builds a relationship with his/her parents during the settling in period and throughout his/her time at the preschool, to ensure the family has a familiar contact person to assist with the settling in process
• Reviewing the nominated key person if the child is bonding with another member of staff to ensure the child’s needs are supported
• Providing parents with relevant information about the policies and procedures of the nursery
• Working with parents to gather information before the child starts on the child’s interests, likes and dislikes and their favourite things available at settling sessions, e.g. their favourite story or resource, as well as completing a baseline of the child’s current development to plan, and meet, the individual needs of the child from the first day
• Encouraging parents and children to visit the preschool before an admission is planned and arranging home visits if necessary.
• Encouraging parents to send in family photos to display to help settle the child
• Sharing photo information books of the setting including photos of staff for the child to take home and share with their parent and become familiar with the staff and new environment
• Reassuring parents whose children seem to be take a little longer to settle in and developing a plan with them, for example shorter days, where possible
• Providing regular updates and photos of the children settling
• Encouraging parents, where appropriate, to separate themselves from their children for brief periods at first, gradually building up to longer absences
• Assigning a buddy or back-up key person to each child in case the key person is not available. Parents are made aware of this to support the settling process and attachment