Birmingham Community Childrens Centre

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

All children attending have special educational needs and/or disabilities. Their assigned staff have a deep knowledge of their specific needs and they receive high levels of emotional support to help them take part. Systems to help settle new children are carefully tailored to each child's unique needs. Children, including babies, form close attachments with staff and enjoy their interactions. For example, babies are coaxed to use the musical instruments and staff sing along to capture their interest. Their interests are followed carefully. For example, babies show an interest in rolling the felt pens and staff swiftly offer a range of balls, which babies delight in exploring and rolling. They show sustained levels of interest in their play and thoroughly enjoy the sensory experiences on offer. For example, babies enjoy using hammers with the dough and are fascinated with the lights in the sensory room.

Children have plenty of opportunities to enjoy books and sing as staff use various visual aids and puppets to capture their imagination. For example, children recall the story and repeat familiar phrases as they use the pretend wolf, pigs and houses. They learn to be kind to others as they explore at their own leisure and are supported well to increase their communication skills.

What does the early years setting do well and what does it need to do better?

• Good progress has been made to address the actions and the recommendation raised at the last inspection. Staff from the outset work closely with parents to identify children's starting points and regularly assess their progress. They effectively use this information and any targets set by other professionals working with children to help identify precise next steps in learning. This information is used as a good base to help construct a curriculum that offers rich learning experiences for children.
• Staff fully understand that working closely with parents is crucial to their success with children. Parents attend numerous workshops to help increase their knowledge of how to support their children. They report that their children enjoy attending and they value greatly the sharing of children's targets, so they can help support their children at home. Parents also benefit from monthly well-being sessions and take part in activities, such as yoga, dress making and pottery.
• The good outcomes are clearly attributed to the effective partnership working with other professionals working with children and families. Staff work closely with these professionals to ensure the environment, equipment and activities provided are suitable to meet the needs of individual children.
• Staff place a sharp focus on helping children increase their communication and language skills and manage their feelings and behaviour. They use a range of effective strategies to help children who speak English as an additional language and non-verbal children to communicate. For example, staff confidently use photos, picture cards, sign language and puppets to help them communicate.
• Staff do not always offer sufficient challenge for the most-able children, in particular, in some aspects of their mathematical development. For example, staff provide a varied range of opportunities for children to count and recognise colours and shapes. However, children have few opportunities to recognise numerals and explore weight and measurement through the activities they enjoy most, to help further extend their learning.
• Promoting children's health and well-being is a clear priority. Staff work closely with parents to educate them about the amounts of sugar in their children's favourite food and drinks. They offer parents advice on good oral hygiene, sleep routines and how to reduce screen time.
• Staff speak highly of the manager and the support and training they receive. For example, staff receive training to support children who need additional medical care. The manager has a good overview of the nursery and new staff benefit from a detailed induction. However, the manager does not often enough observe the quality of teaching. For example, to help her identify very precisely with each member of staff how they can further develop their teaching to the highest level.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• build on staff professional development opportunities to help sustain and build on the good quality of teaching achieved
• plan more effectively for the most-able children to help them make the very best possible progress, this relates to increasing the opportunities children have to explore mathematical concepts.