Devizes & District Opportunity Centre

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities flourish in this specialist centre. Children benefit from excellent setting-in procedures to help them settle in this extremely welcoming learning environment. The experienced and caring staff team places children's individual needs at the heart of everything they do.

All staff know children, their interests, and their abilities extremely well. The curriculum is highly stimulating and individualised. This, alongside staff's consistently high-quality interactions, helps each child to achieve the best possible outcomes from their starting points.

The manager and staff have high aspirations for children. They prepare children exceptionally well for their next steps in education and their future life as citizens in the wider world. Children benefit from outings in the community, such as to the local shops to deliver certificates of thanks for funds raised and to the local nature centre.

Staff sensitively support children to understand behaviour expectations and changes in routine. Children gain listening and attention skills and are eager to explore books. Staff successfully engage children as they read a book about a bear. Children move their bodies with excitement and clap their hands in delight as they listen to the story. Staff expertly support children to look at the pictures in the book and make excellent use of signs and speech to reinforce children's understanding.

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

• The manager is inspirational. She, alongside the staff team, is committed to providing an extremely high-quality provision. The manager meticulously reflects on the provision and staff practice. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic restricting home visits before children start at the setting, she introduced tailored assessment visits for children and parents at the centre. She ensures staff receive effective support and training to enhance their skills further. Additional funding is used well, such as purchasing new resources for the role-play area to develop children's social skills and understanding of the world.
• The manager and staff build exceptional partnerships with other professionals to provide children and their families with expert support. This includes outreach support for other settings children attend and to support children's move to school. Parents and carers speak glowingly about the centre, staff support, and the progress their children have made since starting. They appreciate the wealth of strategies that staff share with them through discussion and online to help them support their children's learning and development at home.
• Staff plan a wealth of purposeful activities that help children to build on what they can do. They skilfully support children to engage in activities that are out of their comfort zones, to extend all areas of their learning. Staff use highly successful strategies to teach children to communicate their needs. This includes picture exchange cards, signs and symbols alongside speech. Children benefit immensely from the individually targeted communication and language sessions.
• Children behave well. Staff teach children how to share as they take turns to press buttons on toys, for example. Children become deeply absorbed in their play. Staff talk to children constantly and successfully encourage them to keep on trying during activities, to enable them to achieve. For instance, during sand play, staff demonstrate how to 'tap, tap, tap' the sand down into the bucket with scoops to fill the bucket up to the top.
• Children eagerly sit down and engage in planned singing activities with staff. Staff support children to make decisions, such as showing them pictures to help children choose the next song. Staff increase children's enjoyment and physical skills, as they help them to 'row, row, row the boat' and to 'wind the bobbin up'.
• Children enjoy exploring sensory resources, for instance water containing glitter, and manipulating dough. Staff extend children's physical skills, encouraging them to 'press down hard' on plastic cutters to make shapes in dough. Staff weave mathematics into activities, such as talking about the rectangle and star shapes. Staff embed simple counting in activities and some children recall and vocalise number names in their play.
• Staff support children extremely well to develop their self-care skills, such as teaching them to drink out of open top cups. They use highly successful strategies to encourage children to eat a variety of food to support their good health. Staff work in partnership with parents to potty train children, when they show signs of readiness. Staff support children's social skills well, such as sitting with children to eat their own lunch and chatting to them.