Relationships, huh! What are they good for? Absolutely everything.
Positive working relationships are the key to running a successful childcare provision. Staff-to-parent relationships are often focused on, whilst the other fundamental relationships can often be forgotten. In this article, we unpick how effective nursery software can help you to improve all human relationships across your Early Years setting, helping your setting to thrive and gain a positive reputation.
Why is communication important in the Early Years?
Communication is key; all misunderstandings, frustrations and parent complaints in EYFS stem from poor communication. All channels of communication must be encouraged through the use of effective technological tools in your nursery.
Relationships are everything; think of the children and families that stand out for making leaps of progress or a team member who achieved their true potential. They all have one thing in common, a positive working relationship. Relationships with staff, parents and children are the determiners of success, and your role as managers and owners is to find time-saving, effective relationship-building strategies to support this.
How does nursery software help to encourage communication?
Online childcare management systems make communicating with colleagues and parents easy and reduce overall time spent on administrative tasks that too often can pull us away from the real purpose of the job, the children. Effective nursery management systems can reduce costs by having all communication needs on one platform.
How nursery software builds positive nursery team relationships
Effective communication between your nursery staff makes your childcare provision run smoothly. Managers and owners must be actively aware of the daily happenings in the nursery to make strategic decisions that benefit the staff and, ultimately, the children.
Nursery software helps staff to keep within ratio
Keeping within EYFS ratio can be challenging. If a team member is unexpectedly absent, it can cause panic and worry that the room will not meet the statutorily required ratio for Early Years. Using Blossom’s staff planning feature, a visual representation of the staff needed to meet the required ratio is automatically calculated, removing the panic and stress of staffing nursery rooms.
Shares important information quickly
Although each child in the nursery has a key worker, it is the responsibility of all staff to monitor the child’s health and development. Sharing small snippets of information between the staff team is vital to meeting children’s needs.
These small yet essential pieces of information (change in family circumstances, concerns for the child, or friendship issues) can often not be passed onto the key worker immediately due to the bustle of the day. With online nursery software, information about a child can be shared directly with all staff with permission to view that child’s profile. This reduces the number of end-of-day admin tasks your practitioners have on their to-do lists.
Reduces nursery practitioner workload
Administrative paperwork for nursery practitioners can be time-consuming as it entails: recording all observations, keeping parents updated on their child’s progress, and reminding parents about upcoming events. Blossom’s online nursery software platform reduces staff workload through the easy-to-use formats and templates created by nursery practitioners for nursery practitioners.
How communication tools help to develop positive parental engagement
Nursery management and communication software are designed to make running your childcare provision easier and more effective. Investing in communication tools helps to keep your parents actively involved in their child’s development, which in turn builds a positive foundation for school-parent relationships for the future.
Share the child’s likes and dislikes across the nursery team
Nurseries are moving away from the paper versions of ‘all about me’ new starter booklets, recognising the increased impact possible by recording all this information in online child profiles. The reach possible with online child profiles means all staff in the nursery can know likes, dislikes and parents’ marital status, number of siblings and the primary language spoken at home about every child, not just those in their regular nursery rooms.
Insider tip:
this can be a double-win to help build practitioner-child relationships too! As your practitioners will stay current with a child’s latest fascination and passion which can be further explored at your setting.
Allow for parental flexibility whilst remaining profitable
Parents have busy working weeks; some weeks may require additional days on top of their usual days. Using your Blossom occupancy planner, additional daily spaces can be calculated, remaining within ratio and filling your nursery rooms to profitable capacity. Building a strong parent-nursery relationship is important for a child to reach their potential; this can be supported by accommodating your parents when their schedules are also busy- while also keeping your nursery on track with your business goals.
Save parents' time
Most parents have grown up in the digital age; they are comfortable with social media and online communications- especially with the move towards online interactions during lockdown. Choose a nursery management software platform where all the important communication tools are in one place- learning journals, diary updates, paperless billing and booking systems as well as the opportunity for parents to collaborate from home. Parents will appreciate the ease of using your software system, saving them time and hassle across several apps and websites.
Give parents a window into their child’s daily learning
Childcare professionals are often the first non-family adults trusted with the child’s care and wellbeing. It can be daunting to hand over full responsibility to a nursery practitioner. Parents build trusting relationships with nursery staff when they can see transparency in their daily learning practices. By using diary updates, practitioners can share videos and pictures to give parents a window into their child’s exciting day and share golden moments, so they don’t miss a thing.
Invite parents to workshops
You may be running workshops to encourage parents to develop communication and language skills through games or advising those choosing the right primary school. Sharing these events via your communication platform can help to build relationships with all families.
Nursery software helps to engage with multiple family members
Children in your nursery may have separated parents; this shouldn’t be a disadvantage when keeping parents up to date with their child’s progress. Blossom’s ParentApp can be shared with multiple family members, keeping their child’s pictures in a safe platform rather than on a public space such as Twitter. Having nursery software with additional safeguarding and safety features to remove permissions and accessibility for any family members causing concern builds confidence and trust with families currently experiencing challenges.
Keep face-to-face parent interactions positive
When parents come to the nursery for pick-up, you don’t want to dampen the positive face-to-face interactions with a payment or booking reminder. Your nursery software should remove the administrative conversations needed with parents through immediate notifications sent via the parent app. Allowing your face-to-face time to be centred solely around the child’s progress and achievements.
How does nursery software build practitioner-child relationships?
A strong relationship between a child and their EYFS key worker can give confidence, help boost self-esteem and support parents with the transition into childcare from the home setting. Effective nursery software that can help nursery practitioners get to know their key children quickly and in depth can be the key to settling new children (and parents) to the Early Years environment.
Build a detailed picture of the child through home visits
Parents know their children best; utilise your nursery software to build a picture of the child’s likes, dislikes and important homelife information. When undertaking home visits, it can be a privilege to be invited to see a child in the most comfortable setting, their home. Record all information about the child and share it with the nursery team to allow a smooth transition into the nursery.
Track small achievements with good nursery software
Ofsted highlights the importance of observing the child’s small steps of progress yet using effective methods to do this so that the majority of the time is spent interacting with the child. Celebrate the smallest achievements with the families through the online learning journals, building confidence, self-esteem and the relationship between the child and their key worker.
How can nurseries encourage parent and child relationships?
Parents often feel a gap between their child’s development in the nursery and at home. Help bridge the learning gap between nursery and home through regular communication via your nursery software platform.
Share their daily activities with nursery software
Parents can continue learning activities across the weekend when they know the types of activities their children enjoy during the nursery day. Sharing play ideas via your newsletter or across your nursery communication platforms can inspire parents to develop learning through play as well!
Secure the link between nursery and home
Nursery software should be collaborative with parents, allowing them to add in their own observations at home as well as share information about the exciting activities they have tried at home. By sharing homelife with the nursery practitioners, it builds stronger relationships and communication opportunities for their key workers.
