Mulberry Corner Nursery & Preschool

Highlights from Latest Inspection

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

The provision is good

Children's communication, emotional well-being and physical skills are given a high priority across the nursery. Staff focus on what children need and work to ensure that the changes they and their parents experience in the current pandemic do not have an adverse impact on their overall well-being.

For example, the 'feelings' area in the pre-school helps children to share how they are feeling. Children settle well and build extremely secure attachments with their key person and the other staff. Children are excellent at sharing, taking turns and cooperating, and they have consistently high levels of respect for other children d...uring the daily activities.

They are confident, and happily share information with new adults. From an early age they show their awareness of what is expected of them. Children have extremely positive attitudes and engage in their play with eagerness.

Older children have excellent self-control and consistently keep on trying at tasks, only asking for help when they need it. Children enjoy a healthy diet and robust processes are in place to ensure that their dietary needs and allergies are respected.

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

The provider and management team have a clear focus on their intentions for the curriculum of learning for children.

Staff focus their skills and activities on the needs of all the children, particularly children's communication, emotional security and physical well-being. Children display excellent behaviour and have a really positive attitude to learning.Staff put time and effort into ensuring that all the children are nurtured, even those children with special educational needs and/or disabilities, those who speak English as an additional language and those with medical conditions.

The manager is the special educational needs coordinator (SENCO) lead and there are several other staff who are also SENCO trained. They do their best to secure additional support for children. Parents report how they appreciate all the effort and time staff put in to ensure their children get the right support to reach their full potential.

Partnership with parents is a strength. Parents state that they feel staff are approachable and they receive a variety of information about their children's day and progress. They state that they appreciate how staff follow their requests such as with feeding or toilet training, but clearly share with them when it is not yet right for their child or not appropriate.

Management and staff complete regular monitoring of their practice and reflect on how they implement the nursery's procedures. They share with parents their current procedures to prevent the risk of infection, and follow good cleaning procedures to maintain a hygienic nursery environment. Management take concerns seriously and respond appropriately in a timely manner.

Staff supervise the children well both inside and outside, and on walks, to keep them safe.Staff enable children to build on their interests and respect their uniqueness. However, at times, most-able children do not have access to resources or interactions that consistently challenge them in their thinking and problem-solving skills.

Staff are respectful of children's backgrounds. They learn some words in a child's home language to help them settle, and gather information about their family and home life. Staff display pictures of children and their family for children to refer to or to provide comfort.

The information they gain about children's backgrounds is used to support individual children. At times, staff miss the opportunity to use this to enable the other children to gain an understanding of their nursery friends' backgrounds and what makes them each unique.Staff kept in contact with children and parents when they were shielding, or when the setting was only open to some children due to COVID-19 (coronavirus) restrictions.

They sent out regular online messages and videos, and shared examples of activities that could be done at home. Staff state that this had a positive effect on helping children to settle quickly back into the nursery.

Safeguarding

The arrangements for safeguarding are effective.

Management and staff are clear on their responsibilities to safeguard children. The designated safeguarding leads undertake regular training to keep their knowledge up to date on the process to follow if they have concerns about a child's welfare. They provide staff with training and support around safeguarding matters and work closely with them to discuss emerging concerns.

Risk assessments are robustly implemented and regularly reviewed to maintain a safe environment for the children, particularly around changing health needs. All staff undergo suitability checks and regularly declare that there have been no personal changes that may affect their suitability to work with children.

What does the setting need to do to improve?

To further improve the quality of the early years provision, the provider should: nincrease opportunities for the most able children to extend on their thinking and problem-solving skills nextend opportunities for children to build on their awareness of each other's backgrounds and what makes them unique.