My Little Fishes Nursery Day Care of Children Drumchapel St Andrew's Church 153 Garscadden Road Old Drumchapel Glasgow G15 6UQ Telephone: 0141 944 7721 Type of inspection: Unannounced Inspection completed on: 25 January 2017 Service provided by: My Little Fishes Nursery Ltd Service provider number: SP2006008614 Care service number: CS2006136828
About the service My little Fishes Nursery has been operating since 2008 and registered with the Care Inspectorate since the Care Inspectorate was formed in 2011. It provides a day care service to a maximum of 41 children across the following age ranges. My little Fishes Nursery Ltd provides the service which operates from renovated church halls within the Drumchapel area of Glasgow. The nursery has access to a secure outdoor play space that includes an area for children to plant and grow their own produce. The aims of the service are to: - Effectively reflect young people's rights as contained in the Children's Charter to young people in Glasgow Educational Establishments. - Reflect and practice that children and young people are safe, healthy, nurtured, achieving, respected, responsible and included. - Continue to provide a high quality learning and teaching (inside and outside) through experiences which develop skills, which the children will be able to use in our changing world - Continue to be enthusiastic in our approach to ensure that all children and young people achieve their fullest potential. - Continue with the understanding that all children and young people have a voice to be listened to at all times. - Continue to develop our learning outcomes (curriculum) tools for life. - Improve the outcomes for children and young families, working closely with partner services. The Care Inspectorate is committed to improving the health and wellbeing of all children receiving a care service. We want to ensure they have the best start in life, are ready to succeed and live longer, healthier lives. We check services are meeting the principles of Getting it right for every child (GIRFEC); Scotland's national approach to improving outcomes and wellbeing for children by offering the right help at the right time from the right people. GIRFEC supports children and their parents to work with the services that can help them. There are eight wellbeing indicators at the heart of GIRFEC: safe, healthy, achieving, nurtured, active, respected, responsible and included. What people told us There were 28 children across the age ranges present during our inspection visit. We observed happy children who interacted with staff with affection and respect. Older children chatted to us about their routines and what they enjoyed doing at nursery. Their comments included: "It's snack time now, we'll have fruity" (child in 3-5 playroom on return from outing). "Smell the flowers they are fluffy" (child playing in home corner of 2-3 playroom). page 2 of 7
For this inspection we received questionnaire responses from 12 parents/carers whose children attended the service. All respondents strongly agreed that they were happy with the overall quality of care that their child received from the service. Most parents had taken time to write additional comments about the quality of the service, such as: "I think the service provided at My Little Fishes is second to none. I have two girls at the nursery and both of my girls love attending. They go in happy and come home happy. Both of my girls have great relationships and friendships with their 'ladies' and their peers. The staff and management are great and always very punctual with keeping us up-to-date with any information and events on going. The online diary is amazing! Being able to read about my girls' day and it's easily accessible; I think it's a genius idea." "My three children have attended the nursery over the past eight years. I feel like it's just part of my extended family. I am 100% confident leaving my child with all the staff. The management team are great and very much involved in every aspect of the nursery The staff are amazing, most staff have been at the nursery for the eight years my children have attended which is great as they all know us well. I am in the Parents' Association and enjoy this very much. I can't thank everyone at the nursery enough. I will be very sad when my daughter goes to school next year! p.s. I love the learning journals!." "My child has attended My Little Fishes Nursery since she was a baby. She will be ready for school next year and the progression, behaviour and overall outcome has been spectacular due to this nursery 's service. I would highly recommend, and do highly recommend, this choice of nursery to other parents." We also spoke to three parents during our inspection visit who confirmed the above sentiments. Self assessment We received a fully completed self-assessment document from the service. We were satisfied with the way the service completed this and with the relevant information included for each heading that we grade services under. The service identified what it thought it did well, some areas for development and any changes it had planned. The service gave us examples of the tools they had used to ensure that families were involved in the selfassessment process. From this inspection we graded this service as: Quality of care and support Quality of environment Quality of staffing Quality of management and leadership 5 - Very Good not assessed not assessed 6 - Excellent What the service does well Staff had created a child centred environment where children's involvement in planning was promoted and valued. For example in the baby room staff had created a picture based inventory book and song block and we saw that this enabled babies to actively make choices about resources and activities they would like. This contributed to children feeling respected, responsible and achieving from a very young age. Staff and parents page 3 of 7
spoke highly of children's online learning portfolios which were used by staff to track children's learning and development and work with them to support their next steps. The service had a keyworker system to help children build attachments and we observed staff knew children and families well. One of the service strengths was how they had utilised these relationships to ensure children's smooth transition from home and through nursery. Children's transition records and comments from parents confirmed that staff were sensitive to children's individual needs and stage of development when supporting their transitions. This ensured that children felt secure and nurtured in their changing environment. All staff had been screened for their suitability for working with young children through the Protection of Vulnerable Groups scheme (PVG). A member of staff was the nominated child protection co-ordinator and participated in enhanced training from the local authority to support that role. They had cascaded their learning amongst staff during in-house updates on best practice. These measures ensured that children were safeguarded while in the care of the service. The service was in partnership with the local authority to deliver early learning and childcare, which meant that the manager was supported in their monitoring and evaluation role by a Leader in Early Learning (LEL). We saw that staff and parents also contributed to the quality assurance processes in a meaningful way. There was a user friendly display explaining the national quality improvement framework 'How Good is Our Early Learning and Childcare' (HGIOELC). The manager had developed bespoke tools based on this and 'Building the Ambition.' so that they could work with staff to systematically monitor and evaluate the quality of children's experiences. The Parents' Association enabled parents to influence service priorities for achieving good outcomes for children. The above approach ensured everyone felt their contributions were listened to and respected by the service. What the service could do better There were clear registers for logging children's attendance that staff were responsible for completing when children arrived at the service and also for parents/carers to sign them out. Emergency contact numbers for children were easily accessible to staff. However on the day of inspection all children were on an outing to the local tennis club and we could not evidence how staff were keeping a tally of the children present. We acknowledged that staff all knew and were responsible for children in their group but the manager agreed that there should still be an overview to ensure the safety and wellbeing of children. This would also help to ensure that staff were deployed in a way that maintained appropriate staff to child ratios when there was a mixed age range of children. We have advised management to review the arrangements for how children's attendance is recorded and monitored when they are out of the nursery building. (Please see recommendation 1) The service was accommodated in a local church, which had the advantage of being very much part of the local community but the disadvantage of being an old building. Management should therefore continue to liaise with their landlord to ensure the maintenance of the fabric of the building. Requirements Number of requirements: 0 page 4 of 7
Recommendations Number of recommendations: 1 1. Management should review the arrangements for how children's attendance is recorded and monitored when they are out of the nursery building. This is to ensure the safety and wellbeing of children at all times. National Care Standards early education and childcare up the age of 16. Standard 2: A safe environment and Standard 3: Health and wellbeing. Complaints There have been no complaints upheld since the last inspection. Details of any older upheld complaints are published at www.careinspectorate.com. Inspection and grading history Date Type Gradings 24 Nov 2014 Unannounced Care and support 5 - Very good 5 - Very good 5 - Very good Management and leadership 5 - Very good 20 Feb 2013 Unannounced Care and support 5 - Very good 6 - Excellent 5 - Very good Management and leadership 6 - Excellent 21 Mar 2012 Unannounced Care and support 5 - Very good Management and leadership Not assessed 18 Oct 2010 Unannounced Care and support Management and leadership Not assessed 29 Mar 2010 Unannounced Care and support 3 - Adequate page 5 of 7
Date Type Gradings Management and leadership 3 - Adequate 3 - Adequate 3 - Adequate 9 Oct 2009 Unannounced Care and support 3 - Adequate Not assessed 2 - Weak Management and leadership 3 - Adequate 15 Dec 2008 Unannounced Care and support 2 - Weak Not assessed 2 - Weak Management and leadership 3 - Adequate page 6 of 7
To find out more This inspection report is published by the Care Inspectorate. You can download this report and others from our website. Care services in Scotland cannot operate unless they are registered with the Care Inspectorate. We inspect, award grades and help services to improve. We also investigate complaints about care services and can take action when things aren't good enough. Please get in touch with us if you would like more information or have any concerns about a care service. You can also read more about our work online at www.careinspectorate.com Contact us Care Inspectorate Compass House 11 Riverside Drive Dundee DD1 4NY enquiries@careinspectorate.com 0345 600 9527 Find us on Facebook Twitter: @careinspect Other languages and formats This report is available in other languages and formats on request. Tha am foillseachadh seo ri fhaighinn ann an cruthannan is cànain eile ma nithear iarrtas. page 7 of 7