Back to childcare

It struck me today that my blog has become a bit random - rather than focusing on living the dream of working in childcare which I had intended it to be (though of course usually what I intend for things to be is never what they actually turn out to be so I don't know why I was so surprised!).

So back to the childcare...

Today I turned up to find two workers in a room with 16 yes that's 16 babies!!! We're supposed to be a ratio of 1:3 - so much for that - today unit 1 had 18 babies and unit 2 had 11 (unit 2, my unit, managed to meet the ratio target but unit 1 didn't!)

What annoyes us the most is that we had new parents coming in for a visit to see what the nursery was about and so we had to hide the fact that we had 6 more children than we should have in one unit... one was handed over to our unit and the other 5 sent to another room with an assistant - I mean, seriously, how crap is that?!?!?!

However there is an upside to working at the nursery - we had a staff meeting today (at 6:15pm I might add when I finished my shift at 4:45 and had to sit around doing nothing for an hour and a half!) where we were introduced to the new planning concepts and key workers schemes which will be put in place from January - this means each employee will have 3 or 4 children within a certain age range for which they have to plan activities for each day of the week to cover the 4 target areas of the government's Birth to Three Matters framework. This really excites me because it means I will be more involved in planning for the intellectualy, social, emotional and physical needs and development of a specific group of children and get to do observation work and feedback to the parents more!

Most of the assistants were unhappy about these changes, about all the paperwork involved etc - but I am used to doing paperwork - when I worked in the care home in Germany I had to document every single activity I did with any of the residents - it makes sense and I prefer it that way - it means you actively play a role in the welfare of those in your care rather than simply going along day-by-day... something that I think is extremely important in an environment such as the nursery where it is often difficult to spend quality time with all the babies. This new scheme should really help us to make sure each child receives at greater standard of care each and every day rather than simply being fed, changed and having a cuddle here and there...

Another plus is that we will soon be learning baby yoga, baby massage and baby sign-language... three things I am so very excited about I cannot begin to tell you... and not only are we learning how to do them - we are actually doing certificated courses in them!! And it's all part of the job!!

Oh how I love my work - even if there are aspects I hate - the other bits sure make up for it!