The Lloyd Park Centre

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children have warm and secure relationships with staff. Children and families receive a welcoming greeting by friendly staff as parents come in and settle their children at the start of the day. This helps children to feel a sense of belonging and supports their personal development.

The managers and staff have an ambitious educational programme and put familiar routines in place to promote children's learning. The special educational needs and disabilities coordinator works effectively in partnership with outside agencies and parents to ensure all children with special educational needs and/or disabilities receive good support. They ensure that additional funding for children is used well to target their specific needs. This has a positive impact on the quality of education that all children receive.

Kind staff set clear expectations to help children to understand how to share areas with their friends. For instance, children give each other space to sit and listen to stories together. This approach has a positive impact on how children respect and treat one another.

Children learn in lively environments, both indoors and outdoors, which are well laid out and support all children's learning age-appropriately.

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

• Staff plan and provide interesting play activities that develop babies' curiosity. Young babies explore sensory baskets that include a variety of materials, textures and objects. When children are playing, staff talk to them about what they are experiencing. For example, as babies touch conkers, staff say 'smooth'. This helps babies and young children to hear language in context, which supports their early understanding and language development.
• Babies and young children have a calm space for daytime sleeping. They sleep when they need to, and most wake up naturally from their naps. In addition, the chef and staff understand all children's dietary requirements and allergies. This promotes children's health and physical development.
• Staff celebrate children's diverse backgrounds and cultures. However, staff do not fully understand the value of children using their home languages alongside English as they play, to further strengthen children's next steps in learning.
• Older children have opportunities to develop their small and large muscles. They run, jump and explore soft-play areas. They dig and use a variety of mark-making tools. However, at times, staff supporting older children do things for them that they could do for themselves, including squirting soap onto children's hands and pouring their drinks. As a result, during some self-care routines older children are not always given enough challenge to be highly independent.
• Staff understand children's abilities and help children to manage risks as they play. Children confidently explore the large, creative outdoor environments. Children climb and pull themselves up onto large wooden boxes. Staff are close by and use encouraging words to promote children's resilience. This has a positive impact on children's physical development.
• Staff make good use of spontaneous learning opportunities. Children snuggle excitedly together outside in the shade as they listen to a story. Skilled staff playfully use these times to extend children's literacy by asking challenging, open-ended questions about the story. This is one way that some staff promote children's early comprehension and reading skills.
• The management team values the staff and observes their practice, providing them with constructive feedback through regular supervision meetings. This has helped to raise the quality of staff's interactions with children to a good level. Nonetheless, the managers recognise that more can be done to strengthen these interactions to an even higher level consistently across the centre.
• The managers value the relationships they have with parents. They set learning targets for children in collaboration with parents, using information gathered from accurate observations and assessments. This supports all children to make good progress from their starting points at the centre.
• Parents speak highly of their children's key persons and appreciate their support. Parents like the regular parents' meetings and the information they receive about their children's progress.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support staff to provide opportunities that challenge older children to do as much as possible for themselves and help them to be highly independent
• improve teaching strategies for children who speak English as an additional language
• support staff to raise the quality of their already good interactions with children to a consistently higher level across the centre.