Ccld 305.

[Guest]

Hi

I am trying to think of the difficulties in assessing provision and services that might be experianced by children and famalies and how we can overcome these and improve services. Can anybody help Thanks

[Helen]

Welcome to the forum Nicky, and thanks for making your first post That's a really interesting question, and I'm guessing it's concerned with the type of facilities that Children's Centres offer? I worked in a CC for a year and we were working hard to improve a previously poor Ofsted result, and were under extreme pressure to assess the whole provision and improve it before the big O came back

 

We started off by looking at the nursery provision, using the ECERS materials (don't now if you're familiar with that?). This gave us an idea, along with the pretty appalling Ofsted report, what we needed to focus on. When we were putting together our action plans, the difficulties seemed to be how we were going to measure improvement. We ended up having a kind of scoring system eg we'd give staff a questionnaire about the training that I had provided, each answer was scored and we ended up with a figure that we could use in the future. So, if I acted on their suggestions, provided more training on specific areas, or improved things in other ways in the nursery, we'd get further scores. Sorry if this isn't making sense!

 

For all the other provisionin the CC, parents' questionnaires were used, along with records of the numbers of people using the various facilities. This is often problematic for a number of reasons;

* parents and carers may be intimidated by questionnaires due to their poor literacy skills

* hard-to-reach families would be difficult to ask, because they didn't attend the CC, so it was difficult to work out why, and what we could do to improve access for them.

*many people don't have the time to complete questionaires, and find them tedious!

 

Sometimes it was very disheartening; we had a fun-filled open morning planned to promote the CC and all its provision; all the staff turned up, balloons, snacks, etc, and we waited.......and waited........and about four families came in the entire morning.

 

Looking back, we perhaps didn't advertise enough; we could have gone round the town for a couple of days before handing out leaflets, etc.

 

I'm sure other members will be able to offer their thoughts here.

[Guest Wolfie]

Welcome to the forum Nicky!

 

Can you give us a little more information about your question? What sort of setting do you work in? For what purpose are you trying to collect this information? Helen's given some very good ideas and suggestions - is that the kind of thing you are after?

[Guest]

Thanks for the brilliant answer about assessing provision. I have just reread my nvq 3 question and it says what are the difficulties with accessing provision and services tha might be experianced by children and famalies, and how procedures and practices can work to overcome these and improve services.? Sorry to lead you up the garden path!

I think that if people did answer a sheet of questions , it would help. Thanks for that

I work in a childrens hospice, and need to answer lots of questions like this for my

NVQ 3.I joined the forum to get support, as my NVQ is in child care learning and development. The focas of the work I do is more on care, and less on educational learning. Hence the need for support.

Thanks

[Helen]

That's OK

 

Part of my answer above answers that question, too! Accessing provision that you know is there is one thing, but not knowing about it in the first place is another. We found it very hard to get information to groups about the activities and facilities that the CC had to offer, eg the young mums' pop in and play sessions, how to communicate with your baby, dealing with your child's tantrums, etc. Once the CC was up and running, we had antenatal and postnatal surgeries run by midwives, so that was one way we could inform new parents of the facilities we had. Also speech and language therapists hired rooms in the CC so sometimes we were able to inform those families, too.

[MrsWeasley]

I'm just doing this question too!

 

I've used my children's care, learning and development text book to answer a lot of it.

 

Click here and pages 192 -196 will be very useful!

 

Mrs Weasley

[Guest]

Thank you Helen for your brilliant answers. They were both very helpfull. Childrens centres do sound like brilliant places for famalies, and its great that all this support is available to everybody.

Its such a shame that they are not being used to their full potential. How about going on local radio oand telivision to promote yourselves.

Thanks also to Wrs Weasley. I thought the way you previewed the book was fantastic. Is it something you set up with Amazon. Can we do it with other books?

 

I am just starting my optional units. I,m doing 306, 307, 308 and 318.Any one doing the same?

Looks like joining this forum is going to be very helpful for me.Thanks again

[Helen]

You're welcome Nicky

I don't work at the CC anymore, but I think your suggestion of going on local radio to promote it is a great one; I'll remember that!

[MrsWeasley]

Thanks also to Wrs Weasley. I thought the way you previewed the book was fantastic. Is it something you set up with Amazon. Can we do it with other books?

 

I am just starting my optional units. I,m doing 306, 307, 308 and 318

 

Hi Nicky,

Actually it's google books! You just type in what you want to look at and it brings you books with it in!

It's brilliant.

 

Google Books

 

I'm doing 306, 307 & 308 but not 318.

Haven't started any of those yet, but would be interesting to talk!

 

Mrs Weasley