Behind the Inspection Rating: Centre plugs in to local needs
Tristan Donovan
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Netherfield Children's Centre's strong record at engaging parents helps secure an "outstanding" rating.
Netherfield Children's Centre, Nottinghamshire; Children's centre
inspection; December 2013
It may have taken seven years for Ofsted to visit Netherfield Children's Centre but the long wait clearly hasn't done the service any harm. Ofsted awarded it "outstanding" following its recent visit, and its sole recommendation was that the centre provides more opportunities for parents to access further education.
A crucial element of the centre's success is its record at engaging parents, which is aided by strong information sharing and close links with the local NHS trust that is part of the consortium behind the centre.
"We are very much linked in with the health service," says centre co-ordinator Mandie Jobling. "We have health visitors based within the children's centre and they go out and see all the new births and bring back pink slips that are given to the centre so it can register those families. That system for knowing about those births is the starting point. Our family support workers then go out and tell families about our services."
The centre is also plugged into the NHS records system. "We are linked to an electronic system called SystmOne and that is the patients' record," says Jobling. "We share that database with the health visiting teams and we record all our information on there so the information sharing is very strong."
In addition to collecting good data, the centre has forged strong links with the community. "Our family support workers have become quite established," she says. "There's lots of continuity of staff within the centre so the average person has been here four to five years and the relationship they've built up is fundamental."
That strong relationship between the centre and local families is further boosted by efforts to encourage parents to volunteer. There are childminding and creche sessions run by parents and the centre makes an extra effort to give lone parents a chance to volunteer.
"We do have a high percentage of lone parents in the area and we very much focus on lone parents to help them raise their aspirations," explains Jobling. "Because Netherfield's quite a deprived area aspirations can be quite low, but we like to support parents to achieve more. What we do is a three-week volunteer training programme and our community development worker goes out to community groups to talk about being a volunteer in the centre."
Ofsted says this drive to encourage lone parents to volunteer has been "remarkably successful" and the centre has seen parents go on to gain NVQs before moving into paid work as a result of becoming volunteers.
"What is satisfying is when you have parents come in the door who are very nervous and you really wouldn't think they would be confident talking within a group and then you see them six months later and they are chairing meetings," says Jobling.
Parents also play a central role in defining future plans for the centre.
"Our improvement planning is a whole-team effort," says Jobling. "We have a planning event once a year with our partners, parents and staff where we sit down and decide what the priorities are for the centre so that it is a joint effort with everybody buying into it. It's not just myself making those decisions and because it is done as a collective, people want those improvements to be made and contribute to making them happen."
FACT FILE
- Description: Netherfield Children's Centre is one of eight children's centres in the Gedling district of Nottinghamshire and works with families in Netherfield and Colwick. The area has significant levels of disadvantage with most under-fives living in poverty and one in four older children under the age of 20 living in poverty. The centre is run by the Nottinghamshire Children and Families Partnership, a consortium consisting of North Nottinghamshire College, Family Action and Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust.
- Number of learners: 830 under-fives live within the centre's catchment area.
- Ofsted unique reference number: 80672
HELPFUL HINTS
First impressions matter. "The self-evaluation form, the SEF, and improvement plan are the first things Ofsted inspectors see because you send them off before they've even walked through the door," says Mandie Jobling, co-ordinator at Netherfield Children's Centre. "You need to make sure they are clear, concise and very positive about the assessment of your centre. There has got to be a thread from the self-evaluation form to the improvement plan and they must interlink."
Act on the data. "I have been in children's centres for 10 years and at the beginning data wasn't an issue, but now you have got to have very clear data as to the rationale behind what you are doing," says Jobling. "For instance, through our data we know that domestic violence is very high in Netherfield and because that's very significant that's something we want to be targeting and reducing. So we run a Freedom Programme course for women who have experienced domestic violence and have Women's Aid in the centre. When the data says something is high, you've got to make it one of your targets to reduce that. Your data is really, really important."