Growing Places @ Oakmeadow

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

Children are happy, engaged and settled. They have strong attachments to staff, which helps them to feel safe and secure. Children love to role play and use a range of props to support their play.

For example, they enjoy being 'hairdressers'. They pretend to wash and cut each other's hair before completing the new look with a range of hair clips. Children understand and respond well to staff's high expectations of their behaviour.

They are curious and keen to learn. Children love looking at books and have clear favourites. For example, children 'read' the 'The Gruffalo' to each other as they demonstrate how well they k...now the story.

Children happily listen to each other and take turns retelling stories.Children are encouraged to follow their interests in a range of ways. For example, children notice that when they touch the condensation on the windows, it makes a mark.

Staff encourage children to explore this further. Children delight in drawing pictures on the window. They learn new vocabulary, such as 'condensation'.

Children then discuss why their pictures 'disappear' with staff. This helps develop their knowledge of the world around them.

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

The curriculum is planned using staff's extensive knowledge of the children.

They tailor their curriculum to focus on the skills the children need. For example, following the COVID-19 pandemic, the curriculum currently focuses on developing children's social, language and self-care skills.Skilled staff assess, plan and reflect regularly to ensure that overall they are meeting each individual child's needs.

As a result, children, including those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, make good progress in their learning and development.Children benefit from specific nurture projects. For instance, children take part in the 'Physical Project'.

This is designed to support children's listening and attention skills by getting them active outside. Staff then introduce a more-focused activity for a set period of time. This becomes longer as children's attention skills develop.

For example, children play games, such as 'traffic lights', outside. They then go inside to concentrate on building things with small building bricks. Children excitedly take part in this project.

They clearly demonstrate the extensive progress they have made with their listening and attention skills in a short period of time.The manager is enthusiastic and passionate about early years. She has started to make positive changes within the nursery, such as focusing on the support for staff.

For example, she now holds regular staff well-being meetings. This provides her with the opportunity to support staff as required.Children are highly engaged in the different activities provided.

For example, they build different creations out of bricks and use tweezers to move buttons around on pictures of 'Pudsey'. However, on occasion, staff deployment is not fully effective to meet the needs of all children. There are times when staff do not consider where they would best be placed to support all children's learning and development.

For example, they become too focused on one activity.Staff use activities to develop children's understanding of being healthy. For example, children prepare fruit for their snack and talk about the reasons fruit is good for you.

However, on occasion, staff do not help children learn how to manage their personal hygiene, such as when they cough and sneeze. This means that children are not consistently supported as they learn about keeping themselves healthy.Parents speak highly of the nursery.

They comment on how friendly the staff are. Parents explain that staff have a 'genuine interest in the children's lives and well-being'. This leads to initiatives, such as the community pantry that has been set up by staff.

This supports families, as required, by providing food received from local supermarkets.The nominated individual has notified Ofsted of changes to directors and has completed criminal record checks for new directors. However, not all the necessary checks required by Ofsted have been completed.

This has minimal impact on children, as directors do not have any unsupervised contact. In addition, the nominated individual has already changed the process they follow to ensure this does not happen in future.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

Staff show a secure understanding of the signs and symptoms that may indicate a child is a risk of harm. They know how to report concerns within the setting but also to local safeguarding partners. Staff demonstrate a secure knowledge of whistle-blowing and how to report allegations if required.

The management team has a robust recruitment process in place to ensure the suitability of staff. There is then a secure process to ensure their ongoing suitability. For example, staff regularly complete a suitability declaration form.

Staff show a secure knowledge of identifying risks in the environment and how to mitigate against these as needed.

What does the setting need to do to improve?

To meet the requirements of the early years foundation stage and Childcare Register the provider must: Due date provide Ofsted with the necessary information about new directors to enable suitability checks to be completed.05/12/2022 To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should: review staff deployment to ensure all children are fully supported by staff, to extend their good learning experiences further develop staff practice further to support children in managing their own personal hygiene.

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