Behind the Inspection Rating: Nursery focuses on safeguarding

The fallout from the 2009 nursery sex abuse scandal at Little Ted’s Nursery lingers on in Plymouth. Having watched such a horrific case take place where they live, parents understandably see safeguarding as the top priority when choosing a nursery for their children.

“Safeguarding is a huge thing in Plymouth because of what happened,” says Hannah Bruty, early years manager at Noah’s Ark City Centre Nursery, which recently won a “good” rating from Ofsted. “When parents come to look around it’s the first thing they ask whereas before it wouldn’t be. They want to know if anyone is ever left alone with the children and the nappy changing procedures so there is a lot more awareness of safeguarding among parents as well as professionals.”

Effective arrangements
Ofsted described the nursery’s safeguarding arrangements as “very effective” with plenty of steps taken to protect the children in its care. All 16 employees have attended the training arranged by Plymouth Safeguarding Children Board and the nursery ensures there are always two members of staff with the children at all times.

The nursery also carefully monitors injuries and incidents to ensure that signs of abuse are not overlooked. “We’ve got chronologies of each child’s time here that shows what happened here and at home to see if we can spot anything that shouldn’t be happening,” says Bruty. “We keep those very confidential and in a locked cupboard.”

Including incidents at home in these chronologies requires parental involvement. “If we notice a bruise on a child or something like that, we ask parents what happened,” says Bruty, adding that the process has become so entrenched that parents now record incidents before even being asked. “To start with it was about getting them used to it, but now they come in and say ‘I need to do a form as he was on his bike and fell over’. I think our parents accept that we need to know these things.”

The nursery’s central location means that many of the children have parents who work in the city centre but many children also come from Polish families living in Plymouth’s historic Barbican area. As a result, the nursery sometimes calls on the local children’s centre when it needs an interpreter. The nursery also offers resources that cater for those for whom English is not their first language. “A lot of the displays in the nursery are in different languages,” Bruty says. “We also have a talking pen.”

This multi-lingual electronic pen helps children learn languages the nursery’s staff can’t speak. “It comes with books and maps,” says Bruty. “You put the pen over a word and it says it aloud, which helps children with pronouncing words.”

Equally clever, in Ofsted’s opinion, is the nursery’s approach to lunch, which it said helped children “develop independence skills”.

The nursery serves lunch in large bowls with serving spoons so the children can scoop out what they want to eat onto their plates.

“The children are encouraged to serve themselves and some of the older ones help the younger ones too, which is quite nice,” says Bruty.

“It’s about giving them independence and preparing them for school.”


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