St Nicholas Playgroup

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is inadequate

Children's safety and well-being are compromised at this playgroup, due to breaches to the safeguarding and welfare requirements.

The designated safeguarding lead has not fulfilled their responsibilities to ensure that staff have a thorough understanding of child protection matters. Furthermore, staff do not monitor children effectively at mealtimes and when eating. For example, children bring food into the play area and run around with it in their mouth.

The staff observe this but do not support children on the potential choking hazards to ensure their safety. Strategies for managing children's behaviour lack co...nsistency and effectiveness. This results in children displaying challenging behaviours that often go unnoticed.

Children climb on items that are not safe, such as radiator covers. Furthermore, they often push and shove each other to access resources that others have. The lack of consistent support from staff regarding the playgroups expectations about behaviour, leads to a chaotic environment.

As a result, children to not receive the support they need to understand how to behave appropriately and safely.Although the manager has developed an ambitious curriculum, this is not understood and implemented effectively by all staff. The current focus is based on children's communication and language skills, independence, and for children to be socially confident.

Children show some interest in the range of experiences and activities provided for them. For example, they enjoy creating with the blocks and planks, and mark making with crayons. However, the same resources are left out all day, and staff fail to notice when children begin to lose interest.

Consequently, staff plan activities they believe children will find enjoyable, yet they lack clarity on the intended learning outcomes.

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

Safeguarding is not effective. The staff do not have adequate knowledge of child protection matters in order to keep children safe and ensure that any concerns are acted upon swiftly.

For instance, they are not confident on the purpose and role of the local authority designated lead (LADO). Furthermore, they do not understand the risk to children of county lines, radicalisation and other aspects of safeguarding that may be present in the local community.Staff deployment is ineffective, not only to prevent potential choking hazards, but also for ensuring children receive consistent, and quality interactions from staff to meet their learning needs.

For example, staff spend long periods of time preparing snack, and spend the majority of their time moving around the room to see to the poor behaviour of the children. This means that the staff cannot dedicate quality time to enhance children's learning and development. The staff's ineffective communication among themselves fails to ensure adequate coverage across all playgroup areas.

This results in children having to cry out for attention. Children are not making the progress they are capable of.The ongoing support and supervision of staff is weak.

The manager has not identified the inconsistencies in staff practice swiftly enough to guarantee improvement. Staff have received some training. However, this has not been successful in ensuring staff provide effective learning experiences.

This negatively impacts on the outcomes for children.Children are physically active in their play. They ride tricycles with ease, manoeuvring around obstacles.

However, at times staff do not adequately risk assess the environment, and take immediate action to minimise these. For example, during play sand makes its way across the majority of the floor causing children to slip. Furthermore, children are not being taught about these risks, and the methods to manage them independently.

The special educational needs coordinator (SENCo) receives positive feedback from parents for making the referral process easily understandable. She has a good understanding of the individual needs of children. For example, they have created spaces for children to calm down, and regulate their emotions through breathing techniques.

However, this is not consistent across the staff team and children become overwhelmed. Furthermore, the quality of interactions from staff is poor, meaning children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), are not receiving consistent support towards their individual next steps in learning.Some key elements of the daily routine are poorly organised and do not reflect children's needs well enough.

They often prioritise staff convenience for tasks, like preparing lunch, over the children's needs. For instance, during story time before lunch, all children are gathered, some sit at the tables not facing the correct direction. As a member of staff reads a story, the children become distracted by their drinks and what the other staff are doing around them.

This does not support children's appreciation for the significance of books, storytelling, or their development of speech and language, which has been highlighted as an area of need.Overall, parents are happy with the setting. They praise the friendly staff team, and the efforts they go to, to make parents feel at ease.

For instance, if children feel uneasy at drop off, the staff will send photographs to reassure parents that their children have settled. Parents have built positive relationships with staff. For example, they are provided with time to speak to their child's key person about what their children have been doing.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are not effective.There is not an open and positive culture around safeguarding that puts children's interests first.

What does the setting need to do to improve?

To meet the requirements of the early years foundation stage, the provider must: Due date take action to ensure that all staff understand the safeguarding policies and procedures, including the role of the LADO 17/05/2024 ensure the deployment of staff meets the safety and well-being needs of the children, particularly during meal times 17/05/2024 implement a behaviour management strategy that is consistent across the staff team to ensure that children understand what is expected of them 17/05/2024 improve the arrangements for supervision of staff so that they rapidly improve their skills and knowledge regarding the quality of teaching provided and their interactions with children 17/05/2024 ensure that risks are swiftly identified and managed through effective ongoing risk assessment 17/05/2024 take action to implement a clear, sequenced curriculum that is understood by staff and consistently embedded into practice.

31/05/2024