A TROUBLED South Ockendon day nursery has, once again, been heavily criticised by Ofsted.
Following an inspection in June, Ofsted sent Sweet William Day Nursery in Darenth Lane, a notice to improve.
Ofsted have published their follow up report.
The report details. at length, the steps that were taken, after the visit in June.
The report states:
"An inspector carried out a monitoring visit on 4 September 2014. She found that insufficient steps had been taken to meet actions raised at the original inspection in June 2014.
"She also found that there were further breaches of the requirements of the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage. As a result, Ofsted took the decision to take enforcement action against you.
"Ofsted issued welfare requirement notices in relation to behaviour management, key persons and training, support and skills.
"Ofsted also issued notices to improve relation to food and drink, premises and educational programmes. All of these notices were to be met by 30 September 2014.
The report goes on to detail the most recent visit in October.
The report states:
At this visit the inspector found that you had improved the quality of meals served to children and that these were of suitable nutritional quality. Children were observed to enjoy their food and ate meals made from fresh ingredients. This meant that children were now receiving a healthy diet. This part of the notice has been met.
You told the inspector that your manager left without notice on 26 September 2014. The acting deputy manager has stepped in to the role of manager in the meantime. However, she is new to this role and this sudden change in management has had a negative impact on the organisation of the setting.
This means that limited progress has been made to meet the other notices issued after 4 September.
For example the inspector found that the notice relating to behaviour management has not been met. You told the inspector that you have carried out training sessions with the staff on behaviour management techniques. However, staff were failing to consider children’s ages and stages of development when describing how they manage children’s behaviour. For example they told the inspector that they would use the reflection corner to give children time out and that this was being used with all age groups. This is not appropriate for the youngest children in the setting and staff were unable to tell the inspector how they would support children to behave well. This part of the notice has not been met.
You have not taken effective steps to meet the notice issued in relation to monitoring staff practice to ensure successful learning outcomes for children. You told the inspector that you have not carried out any supervisions of staff. You showed the inspector a record of one observation of staff practice. However, this observation focussed on care routines and did not consider any aspect of staff promoting children’s learning and overall development.
In addition, the inspector found that there have been no focussed improvements to the key person system to improve the ways in which staff plan for individual children’s learning and development.
Staff’s observations of children’s progress do not link to planning for children’s next stage of learning. This means that staff are not planning for children’s individual needs to enable children to make good progress. Current numbers of children attending the setting are low.
Staff have consequently grouped children together in mixed age groups. While children are able to mix with others in a larger group, staff are not differentiating activities and resources sufficiently to meet children’s individual needs. This also means that key persons are not deployed well across the setting to provide consistency for individual children. This part of the notice has not been met.
You have taken steps to tackle areas of hazard identified at the visit on 3 September 2014, including the worn and dangerous safety flooring. The gaps have been fixed so that the flooring in both garden areas is now safer. However, the inspector found that there were tools and open paint cans in a shed which is used to store children’s toys. This area can be accessed by children and had not been checked.
In addition the inspector found several other areas inside where potential hazards had not been identified and tackled. For example, the toileting area used by children was unclean and open detergent packets were accessible to children by the washing machine. These areas had not been identified or tackled through the risk assessment process.
The inspector found that risk assessments are limited to tick sheets that encourage staff to identify only a specific range of hazards. This means that it is easy for staff to miss other areas of hazard to children. This part of the notice has not been met fully.
Having considered all the evidence, the inspector is of the opinion that the setting has not taken prompt and effective action to address the points for improvement.
