Once a confirmed booking has been received either full or part-time, arrangements are made for the baby / child to come and spend some time with us in nursery in the group they would start.
The childs parent or guardian would be invited to come in and have a coffee. All paperwork would be ready to fill in, also breakdown of fees. The contract is signed one for the parents/guardians and one for nursery, all medical information gone through, consent forms are signed for trips out also for Mini bus if child is lower pre-school or pre-school age. All parent/guardian information is filled in along with password for the parent/guardian. All information kept in children files. While this is being done the child will be able to wonder in the area probably still looking fortheir parent or guardian. This first visit is mainly to do paperwork and for child familiarise himself with staff and children.
Would be usually two hours when the parent or guardian would come in and settle child but always say goodbye. Two hours isn’t long, but to a child who sometimes has never been apart from their parent or guardian it could be endless.
Would usually be until 1.00pm when we would be able to have a lunchtime visit. This can be a shock to some children, although great social occasion they are to busy watching what everyone else is doing and eating at the same time. We do not worry too much if he doesn’t eat too much, but do tell the parent or guardian when they pick him up.
This is usually a full day visit (or nearly) 9.30 - 3pm. Long enough for a first full day.
We do expect children to cry when their parent or guardian leave and we very tactfully say to the parents/guardians they will stop crying. That is very difficult for a lots of parents / guardians. When they come back to pick up if possible we try to get the parent/guardian to watch him through a window without him knowing. It is nice for parents/guardians to see their little me playing and settling down.
If we have any problems with our settling in period we will extend this, we have to be very flexible. By experience we find four visits is usually enough.
All medical history (allergies etc) dietary requirements are noted and all staff informed.
To visit a graphical version of this page, follow this link graphical version of settling in page (access key y).
We want this website to be accessible to everyone. Every page in the site is available in a styled version and a text only version. We have also implemented alternative text for all images and wherever possible access keys for navigation between the main pages. To navigate from any "styled" page to a text page the access key is "x", to navigate from any text page to the styled equivalent the access key is "y"