Children spotted eating each other's poo,’ screams the newspaper headline reporting on an inadequate Ofsted report from a Manchester day nursery.
Although the majority of inadequate nursery Ofsted reports do not result in such shocking headlines, they do highlight where nursery practitioners are deemed to be going wrong with basic care routines, in this case poor practice around nappy changing, with faeces leaking unnoticed onto surfaces.
Along with criticisms around basic hygiene, inspectors often judge settings to be inadequate because children's welfare and safety have been compromised by issues around sleep practices, medication policies and general safety around the nursery, including children having a lack of supervision.
Tragically, recently safety issues during nursery mealtimes were not picked up by nursery leaders or inspectors and resulted in two young children choking and dying in separate incidents (see September's Management article).
While there is currently a lot of criticism around the present Ofsted inspection regime, it is important to question why practitioners are making these ‘simple’ errors and explore what leaders can do to address these dangerous, and sometimes fatal, failings.
Why are safer practices being overlooked?
Often these failures in safer practice can be attributed to more than one problem, including:
- Qualifications and training
Early years consultant Penny Tassoni says early years qualifications have become less rigorous at covering safer practices.
‘All the qualifications have something in terms of safety and care routines and risk assessment in them, but it should be about drilling down and looking at not just the importance of a typical qualification statement but the “how” and the “why”. The detail of the component is often missing from the qualifications.’
Tassoni believes that children's stage of development should be linked to health and safety because this impacts on how children are supervised and care routines are implemented.
‘There are courses in safer practice online which staff might do alone or at home in their own time,’ adds leadership coach and early years consultant Ruth Mercer. ‘They are often just a tick box of completion rather than taking it back for professional discussion with the workplace. Rules change too so staff may be working to different expectations from different courses.’
- Recruitment crisis
A high staff turnover in many settings is leading to a greater reliance on agency workers.
Mercer warns that these temporary workers need to adapt quickly to new situations but that agency staff vary greatly in skills and knowledge. She adds that the induction of agency and new staff members into the setting's safe practice routines might be an issue.
Mercer also warns, ‘Where there are recruitment issues, this huge and important task falls to the managers or leaders and could impact on their oversight of provision.’
- Lack of guidance
Ofsted's role is to ensure compliance with the EYFS, not to advise on how to meet those requirements, so providers are often left to make their own judgements on safer practice.
‘It is not uncommon for inspectors to then disagree and identify specifics as issues within an inspection process,’ says Mercer. ‘Like us all, inspectors who work for Ofsted have to make judgment calls and at times they may come from their own experience and viewpoints. It is difficult to legislate for the human factor, hence the ambiguity and uncertainty that arises.’
Also, she questions, if there is no clear guidance, what is the basis of the information in the policies?
- Generic policies
‘Settings often buy into off-the-shelf policies because it saves them a huge amount of time; however, these documents have been developed for a wide audience – childminders, sessional care, group care and after-school clubs – and, therefore, are likely to contain lots of generic information,’ says Pennie Akehurst, managing director of Early Years Fundamentals.
‘This means that anyone adopting off-the-shelf policies needs to ensure that each of their policies firstly aligns to current practice in their setting and secondly contains enough information to guide their actions when needed.’
Mercer adds that ‘packages of policies’ adopted by leaders do not necessarily become embedded into practice.
- Daily pressures
CPD can also be missed because of staff shortages and lack of time during a busy nursery day. ‘Any professional development within the working day is difficult and may not reach every staff member,’ says Mercer.
Clare Ford, quality support lead at Monkey Puzzle, also warns about ‘manager burnout’, particularly in standalone settings where they are under a lot of pressure. ‘It's the managers who are holding it all together, but who is looking after them?’ she says. ‘When the managers burn out they don’t function properly and it's like a domino effect – are they reviewing policies and training?’
What can be done?
‘Policies, procedures and training have to be incredibly robust and organisations have to be quick to review their policies when something goes wrong or problems are identified because it is about keeping children safe. We should be learning lessons from near misses and ensure a real embedding of policy,’ says Ford.
She advises keeping track of published inadequate Ofsted reports to see what issues are repeatedly being raised, share them with the staff team and compare them to how things operate at your own setting. ‘This is really effective CPD for staff because it's about them self-evaluating their own practice,’ she says.
When thinking about policies around safety and care routines, Tassoni emphasises the importance of taking into consideration the age and stage of each child.
‘For example, if you know that children's self-regulation and impulse control is very low at two and a half then what does that mean for how you supervise and keep children safe?’
she questions. ‘Just telling a child “no” does not work when they are highly impulsive. You may need to use a safety gate or remove equipment because telling a child not to touch something will not work.’
While settings may already have sound policies, Ford stresses the importance of making sure that written policies are actually enforced rather than ‘just gathering dust’.
She says, ‘Once a month, managers should pick a policy and check how effective it is by doing a deeper dive, for example, look at the policy around medications, ask staff questions about the policy, observe the medicine procedure in action, check medication forms and run through some scenarios with staff. You can then determine what the weaknesses are in your policies and practice and what needs addressing.’
Giving in-the-moment feedback when noticing a staff member has not followed procedure – explaining how things should be done differently and why – is important, adds Ford.
If poor practice is saved up for supervisions then it is being allowed to continue and maybe even spread to other practitioners. Mercer also suggests peer-to-peer observations to ensure everybody has accountability and receives feedback.
She adds that induction is critical to ensure that there is consistency of information and advises linking new practitioners with more experienced ‘buddies’. ‘Coaching and mentoring within the nurseries helps reduce a blame culture and reduces “fear factor”,’ says Mercer.
Along with practitioners supporting each others’ practice, Mercer recommends linking safer practice to the curriculum and pedagogy of the setting to develop a more ‘seamless approach’ with adults being role models and encouraging children to, for example, sweep spilt sand, mop a wet floor and hang up coats. Children are then actively learning how to identify hazards.
While policies can be strong, they do not replace alert and engaged staff.
Tassoni firmly believes in staff practising ‘active supervision’ when working with children, as opposed to ‘passive supervision’. ‘Active supervision does not mean watching children, it means being involved with them.
Passive supervision is mainly just keeping an eye out,’ she explains. ‘It is important to actually be involved; for example, if I am sitting with a child while they are eating, I will notice whether or not a piece of fruit is too big for them. It's about being actively engaged with children but also keep positioning where you sit in a room, so although I am actually working with children, my line of sight means that I am able to see beyond them in case something else is happening.’
Tassoni adds that some accidents are caused because children are not engaged purposefully, which can also be averted through active supervision.
She says, ‘If you’re actively involved with children, you’re talking with them, you’re giving them opportunities and, at the same time, you’re keeping them safe.’