Choosing A Key Person

[Helen]

What are your views on children choosing their own key person? By this, I mean the nursery setting not deciding randomly which children are assigned to which members of staff, but allowing the children over time to gravitate to an adult they feel most comfortable with, and then making that practitioner their key person. I'd welcome your opinions.

[Guest]

Nice idea but what if the children all went for the same person???

[hali]

in an ideal world i think that would be great Helen.

 

Unfortunatly in reality - i think children would graviate to a few members of staff leaving others with none and in preschools with staff and children doing odd sessions may not work - let me think some more on it

[sunnyday]

Hi Helen

 

I'm not sure how that would work.......

 

My method is - parents complete an 'Entry record' - this is made up of bits that I have 'stolen' from all over the place! I then try to 'match' the child to a staff member - we are a very small team - this has always worked quite well, perhaps this is because we are all working in one room and we all spend time individually with all children (does that make sense?) - I think that at the same time we all feel a responsibility towards our Key Children and we make every effort to build a 'special' relationship with them and their parents.......

 

I also think that parents need to know who their child's Key person is from the 'get go'.....

[laura]

Hmmm, I usually allocate key children by matching up hours to be honest as all staff work various sessions. However when a child has made regular visits I do try to match them up with someone they have bonded with. But with 75 children and 9 staff I have to share out evenly!

[Fredbear]

I love the idea of this but as previous posts have said in reality it would be extremely difficult. As a provision we all work to the same aims, although we may work in a slightly different way but thats a good thing. Our children learn from the very beginning that they can come to any of us for anything and our keyperson system involves settling the new children in, interacting with parents, observations, snacktime, and learning journals, at all other times we equally care for them all.

Would love to hear of other settings ideas and thoughts.

[redjayne]

We do this for most of our children especially if they have forged a bond with a certain staff member on settle sessions and in the first couple of weeks, occasionally we do have to allocate depending on numbers but generally it works for us, and in as much as as adults we gravitate towards different people, children do as well. There are some staff who are more popular than others ( I have one whom a lot of the boys want to 'marry' - she is an excellent practitioner and very sweet !) but generally we can strike a balance. The other thing I have done on occasion is match according to the parent, as I have staff who are skilled at 'nurturing' anxious parents and others who cope really well with some of our more challenging parents.

[louby loo]

We allocate before the start of term, then if necessary after a little while we change around matching personalities etc. Parents are made aware of this when they start, and this works well for us. We've had a change around today. Maybe we're lucky but numbers always seem to work out ok. Mind you we are pre-school 2-5 and some of the more confident children are totally oblivious as to who their key-persons are anyway. Also for us the keyperson does the LJ, observations and forms partnership with the parents, the staff all 'work' equally with all children.

xx

[Rea]

I've never thought about startingit like that but we have swopped key person if a child has shown a distinct preference for aparticular member of staff.

Most of the children dnt know wo their key person is and come to that, some of the parents dont take it in either. An ideal world and all that...

[Guest]

We allocate key persons before the child starts, if an older sibling has already attended the setting I try to give the family the same key person as they have already built up a relationship with these parents.

 

I have never had to change a child's key person (so far)

 

Good to hear how others operate

[Helen]

Many thanks for all your replies. I'm working with a student who implements this in her room....and she wanted reassurance that this was good practice, if it were at all possible to organise.

[Lou]

Hi all, our children are not allocated untill the first half term. We have not had any problems with children just choosing one member of staff YET.