Hope for Children and their Families

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are very settled, content and calm. Staff are warm and nurturing. They foster secure relationships with children when they start and continue to build on these over time. Children enjoy lots of positive interactions with staff. They make their own play choices and engage in varied activities throughout the day. Children gain increasing independence skills as they grow throughout their time at this provision, including being able to wash their hands, self-feed and use the toilet.

The curriculum is ambitious, and children's interests are at the heart of what is provided. Babies enjoy building towers, sharing books with staff and experimenting with making sounds in the role-play kitchen. Managers have recently taken steps to create more designated age- and stage-appropriate spaces for two- to four-year-old children to play and spend time in. This has greatly benefited staff and has had a positive impact on children's attitudes towards learning. Toddlers enjoy small-group song time with nursery rhyme flashcards. They also like play dough and sand play. Pre-school children enjoy counting stories and songs during small-group time. They also have the opportunity to learn about the autumn season through sensory experiences with leaves. All children make good progress in their learning.

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

• Since the last inspection, leaders have taken proactive steps to improve. They have worked closely with the local authority to raise standards. Managers are passionate about their work and ambitious. They have a clear plan for the future, and their vision is aligned as they know what they want to achieve moving forwards.
• Managers recognise the hard work of their staff and value the team. Staff's morale is positive, and the culture of mutual respect and teamwork is now embedded across the provision. Managers have collaboratively worked with staff to make changes to the environment and to staffing arrangements within the age groups, and make small adaptations to the curriculum, with an aim of improving the culture of teamwork. However, there is scope for managers to have greater oversight of staff's teaching and provide them more targeted support in this area to encourage more consistency across the provision. This is because, on occasion, staff do not fully extend children's learning during their interactions with them to help them broaden their choices and persist more with certain activities.
• Managers know and understand the key learning aims for children attending. Staff know children very well. They observe and assess them routinely and plan activities aimed at narrowing attainment gaps. The provision for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) is strong, with staff utilising lots of strategies of support. Children with SEND benefit from early identification, targeted play plans and a robust monitoring approach.
• Staff manage children's care well. They promote positive behaviours and support children's individual needs. This includes taking account of recently updated healthy eating guidance swiftly to review and implement a new menu in the provision. However, there is room to review how times of transition in the daily routine are managed, such as moving between group time, lunchtime and playtime. Staff are not always clear enough about what is happening now and next. Therefore, occasionally, these transitions take a long period of time. This does not help children to make the most out of their time at the provision.
• The provision garden is a source of great delight for all children, including babies. All children enjoy physical play outside. Babies learn to take turns to use the low-level climbing apparatus and play on the available ride-on toys. Toddlers learn to throw and catch balls with support from staff. Pre-school children learn to confidently negotiate the space and speed up and down on push bikes. This helps to build on and strengthen children's physical skills.
• The provision is secure, clean and well maintained. The environment is safe, and recent reorganisation has helped to reduce clutter in the provision throughout. Recruitment is robust, and all staff are suitably vetted. Since the last inspection, induction processes have improved, and there is a clear procedure in place to support new members of the team. Managers are knowledgeable designated safeguarding leads, and all staff fully understand their safeguarding duties. This helps to protect children from harm.
• Parents are very positive about the provision. They comment that their children are very happy and make good progress attending. However, there is scope to further engage parents in the provision. This specifically relates to the curriculum, what their children are learning and how this is taught, to help share more ideas to extend this between the provision and home.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• provide staff with more robust feedback and training focused on their teaching to establish more consistency and further elevate their practice
• review how times of transition between daily routines are managed to help children make the most out of time spent at the provision
• enhance partnerships with parents further to foster a more collaborative and joined-up approach to children's learning between the provision and home.