Tots Care

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

The manager and staff team know the community exceptionally well. They identify the individual needs of children and provide many experiences that help to prepare them for their future learning and eventual move to school. Staff have created imaginative spaces that spark children's interests.

Children act out roles that are familiar to them, such as being a doctor, caring for poorly babies, being a parent cooking dinner or pretending to be a shop keeper counting money. Children show a real eagerness to take part in activities and are proud of their achievements. For example, they take care and time to create pasta pictures, wit...h cooked and dried pasta.

They enjoy creating pictures with chalk and give meanings to the marks they make. Children's language is fostered well as staff engage them in conversations, model words, sing their favourite nursery rhymes and read stories. Children's behaviour is good and they appear confident in their surroundings.

They build secure relationships with their key persons, who take the time to get to know them well. Children are very happy. They show enjoyment as they interact with staff and their friends.

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

The manager is passionate about providing every child with the best start in life. She is well known in the community and recognises the needs of families. The manager and staff work well together and go above and beyond to provide advice and support to all of the families.

This helps to promote the welfare of children and their families.The manager completes supervision meetings and offers coaching and support to all staff. She identifies training needs and ensures all staff complete mandatory training.

Staff have received some in-house training to develop their knowledge of how best to support children to learn. However, the manager does not fully recognise how to further share staff's skills. The monitoring of staff's practice is not highly focused on raising the quality of teaching to the highest level.

Staff continually evaluate how children use the lovely, exciting and inspiring spaces inside and outdoors to support their ongoing engagement in learning. Children's imaginations are fostered well. They have lots of opportunities to explore their own ideas and initiate their own play.

Staff join in with children's creative play effectively and encourage them to link their play to experiences from home.Staff value and respect every child. They gain lots of information about children's backgrounds when they first start.

Staff share children's experiences, traditions and religions to help all children to learn about people, places and communities beyond their own. This helps children and families to gain respect and tolerance for others and the world they live in.Staff complete baseline assessments and ongoing observations to build up a picture of each child's learning.

They use this information to identify children's next steps, plan experiences to consolidate their learning and generally build on their skills. However, some staff do not use the information as effectively as others in order to precisely tailor their teaching and provide children with the highest levels of challenge, so that all children have the opportunity to excel in their learning.The curriculum is generally broad and varied.

For example, children have lots of opportunities to handle tools and make marks to support their early writing skills. Staff introduce counting, numbers and shapes to develop children's early mathematical development. Staff help children to foster a love of books as they share their favourite stories with them.

Partnerships with parents are a particular strength of the setting. Staff provide them with ongoing information and give them activity ideas to support some home learning. Staff share children's progress and encourage parents to take books home to read to their children.

They are currently helping parents to gain a better understanding of how they can contribute further to supporting children's language development at home.Staff support children's good health and physical well-being really well. Children have lots of opportunities to be physically active as they play outdoors with a wide range of equipment.

Staff make good use of the local field to provide more opportunities for children to explore and investigate. Staff work with parents to support children who are toilet training and they encourage children to become independent with managing their self-care skills.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

Staff have a good understanding of their responsibility to protect children from harm. They identify the signs and symptoms of abuse and neglect and know how to report concerns if they are worried a child is at risk or suffering. Staff are aware of social issues in the local community and wider safeguarding concerns.

They implement robust policies and procedures to promote children's welfare. Staff complete risk assessments and ensure strict security measures are in place to help keep children safe.

What does the setting need to do to improve?

To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should: strengthen the monitoring of staff's practice and identify ways to share staff's skills and expertise to raise the quality of teaching to the highest level help all staff to make even better use of what they know about children when planning activities in order to provide more challenge and support for every child to reach the highest levels of attainment.

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