Jeanne Saunders Centre

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is outstanding

The inspirational manager and staff go above and beyond to fully include all children and their families. The setting caters specifically for children with high levels of additional needs, including severe language delay and autism.

All staff are extremely experienced, qualified and are experts in special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND). They use their wealth of knowledge to provide a meticulously organised curriculum, where every child thrives. Staff are exceptionally calm, sensitive and nurturing and build wonderfully strong and trusting bonds with all children.

Children are extremely excited to a...ttend the setting and love their time spent playing, exploring and interacting with staff. They are notably happy, secure and motivated, despite their developmental delays.Children benefit from high-quality, individually tailored support plans, and are given every opportunity to reach their full potential.

One of the main focuses of the setting is supporting children's early language development, as children typically join with non-verbal communication. Staff are expert teachers and use highly consistent strategies. For example, at all times, they speak calmly and clearly and use sign language and visual aids alongside their speech.

They pay great attention to children's early forms of communication, such as facial expressions, gestures and sounds, and model simple language and sentences to voice children's actions. Due to the extensive support, children are beginning to learn and use words, make choices in their play and follow instructions. They are making exceptional progress, given their individual circumstances.

What does the early years setting do well and what does it need to do better?

The manager and staff work exceptionally closely with a wide range of outside agencies and specialists. Prior to children attending the setting, staff build a thorough understanding of each child's individual needs and access a vast amount of information from all those involved in children's care. Children are regularly visited by professionals, including physiotherapists, educational psychologists and health visitors, to ensure they are receiving the specialist support needed.

Staff use this invaluable expertise to assess children's needs, ensure the correct diagnosis and put highly effective support in place. Subsequently, children make as much progress as possible in their learning.Working with, and supporting, parents is a huge focus and strength of the setting, and parents feel overwhelmingly appreciative of the support they receive.

They comment that they used to feel isolated but now feel part of a community and much better equipped emotionally and strategically to support the needs of their children. The manager and staff give parents extensive support and work tirelessly to guide, involve and encourage them. Parents benefit greatly from regular coffee mornings and workshops with local specialists.

These are organised to give parents a safe space to talk and to share crucial information to help them support and extend learning at home.Staff are incredibly knowledgeable about each child and use their interactions to full effect in maximising children's learning. They join in with children's play and experiences extremely patiently, sensitively and enthusiastically.

With staff support, children are able to access a wide range of experiences, such as planting seeds in soil, moulding and manipulating dough and painting. All activities and resources are specifically provided to encourage children's most important skills. For example, children develop control over their bodily movements on trampolines and balance beams and learn about safety as they carefully climb steps before jumping onto a beanbag.

Each group of children has a specialist teacher and the setting benefits from the expert support of an in-house speech and language therapist. Together, they meticulously monitor children's developing language and use highly effective one-to-one and small-group activities. Through this, children are rapidly expanding their language and following more complex instructions, such as 'put the car on the box'.

Staff continuously test and stretch children's understanding and progress through an extremely detailed and successful programme of support.Staff are excellent role models and use highly consistent strategies to support children's early understanding of expected behaviour and social interaction. They are always calm and patient with the children and give them clear and gentle guidance, warm praise and constant reassurance.

Although children do not yet play together, they are learning to respect each other's personal space and play alongside each other harmoniously. Staff put great effort into teaching children how to share and take turns and, through their participation in games and activities, children are able to wait for their turn. This is a highly impressive level of understanding and behaviour given children's levels of additional needs.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.There are robust systems in place for the recruitment, induction and training of staff. Staff adhere closely to the thorough policies, procedures and risk assessments to fully promote children's health, safety and well-being.

They demonstrate an excellent knowledge and understanding of all aspects of safeguarding matters. This includes their awareness of possible indicators of abuse and the procedures to follow in order to make timely referrals. Staff fully understand the specific needs of the children in their care and the great importance of supervising them vigilantly at all times.