Play Leaders Report – 26[th] January 2021 Donna Hoare Preschool Manager of Stepping Stones
Welcome and thank you all for attending this zoom meeting today. For some of you this will be your first AGM at Stepping Stones, unfortunately due to the present situation, this meeting has to be arranged via zoom. We hope you are all happy with our setting and the way we are currently working at Stepping Stones so far?
It is extremely important, and we are grateful that you have been able to attend this meeting as the preschool is a committee run Charity setting, where the parent/carers of the children who attend, agree/disagree with the way the setting is run.
Over the past year that some of you here have attended Stepping Stones, you will remember that his has been a very unsettling year for everyone, due to the pandemic. We are happy to include our new families since September, and that we continue to have wonderful parents/carers attending our setting.
I would like to go through with you what we have completed over the last year at preschool.
We started our Autumn term by taking 17 new children onto our register, joining the 4 children who stayed on from July 2020. We found that Settling the children in did take slightly longer than usual, but are happy to say that all children appear to be settled nicely now. We were prepared for children to take slightly longer due to them being at home with family members, and not being able to socialize outside their “bubble” like they would of normally. We are Ofsted registered to take 26 children each day. At the moment our days varies with the number of children attending. At present we have 21 children on our register. We have another five children starting from January/February and also, I am still receiving enquiries from prospective parents for a place for their child. We continue to have a waiting list for children who are not yet at the 2 years 6 months age that we can accept them from. We are happy that we have been able to fill all our places as due to the current situation, many nurseries are struggling with the number of children attending.
Every year, each child is given a key person who will observe your child’s development and keep their folders up to date with their progress. These folders are confidential between yourselves and us. When your child sadly leaves us, the folder will go home with you.
You would of all attended a meeting with your child’s key person to talk about their development progress.
The staff all continue to work extremely hard with all the children, and have put every effort into treating each child as an individual, getting to know the new children and valuing their ideas and interests, so that each one of their next steps of development can be achieved. I can already see that each child has built a “bond” with their key person. The children know who their key person is, this is also thanks to you as parents as you talk to your child about their day and involve their key person’s name in the conversation, this helps to make your child feel secure when they are at preschool. I hope you are all happy with the
progress they have made, whilst being with us, most importantly their Personal and social development.
We continue to have weekly planning meetings where we discuss and cover all areas of the EYFS, and plan accordingly for the following week which focus activities, resources and learning objectives we want to meet. All staff in each group are involved in the learning and development of the children, as each key person will advise other staff what their child’s next steps of learning they are working on.
Each Key Person has/will continue to have at least 2 meetings per school year, with their child’s parent/carers so that we can show you your child’s Learning Journey, discuss the progress your child is making, and raise any concerns together you or we may have about your child. We encourage parent/guardians to speak to either myself or their Key Person at any time if you would like something discussed. As it is more difficult for key persons to speak to you at drop off or collection times, please message/ring me if you would like to speak to your child’s key person or myself at any time. You are always welcome to speak to either/both of us in the morning or afternoon if you have any concerns.
The staff and I continue to include in our meetings updated information regarding safeguarding, government guidelines and to develop our CPD. Ideas to develop children’s learning is always discussed with putting different resources into play. We find that the ideas that come forward during these meetings, help to develop our practice. We have all attended different training courses either via Zoom or on line, especially during lockdown. Safeguarding and First Aid are always revised at our weekly staff meeting. The staff and myself attend conferences/courses/forums that Harrow Early Years provide, to make sure we are putting the best we can into our setting. Training courses are usually chargeable, even some of our on line courses we attend. On most occasions, one member of staff will attend the course and then relate the information to rest of the staff at our weekly meeting.
We continue to have the same staff working at the Pre School on a daily basis.
I am the Child Protection officer for our setting and regularly update myself with procedures we should be following according to Ofsted and our Local Harrow Safeguarding Board. Please be aware that we always put safeguarding at the highest priority at Stepping Stones. Please can I ask for all parent’s to be aware of Ofsted’s Safeguarding to Parents. I have a copy in the parent/carer folder if anyone would like to see it?
There are times throughout the year we have work experience students come into our setting to work with alongside the children. We never leave a child/children on their own in a room with the student and they are not allowed to take your child to the toilet. We presently have Roberta, who is studying for her Level 2 in Early Years with us for the year. She has settled well into our setting and the children look forward to seeing her on a Thursday.
I work Monday to Friday term time only. I am one of the SENCO Co-Ordinator’s and attend termly meetings, which is now over Zoom, with leaders at Harrow Council who help children with special education needs develop. They update us on all areas of help we may need should we have children in the setting who will benefit from this. Arleta Lamek is also SENCO qualified and assists me at the meetings.
I am extremely proud to have the staff we have at our setting who continue to provide a warm, caring and secure setting. We all work well together, even now with the present situation, we all bring different talents to the setting, and continue to work as a team making Stepping Stones our other family.
Debbie continues to work Monday to Thursday. She is acting Deputy manager and the Deputy Safeguarding Officer, who also updates herself with Safeguarding requirements regularly and completes on line courses whenever possible. She holds a good bond with the children, having an extremely caring and nurturing way. Debbie continues to use resources and activities to help develop her key children’s learning to enable them to reach their next step.
Arleta works Monday to Friday. She continues to work hard with the children, to ensure that she uses activities/resources that are of interest to them, in order to keep them interested in their learning development. Arleta always offers great ideas for literacy and numeracy resources she has made up herself, which the children enjoy. Her art work is an asset to our setting!
Oana works Tuesday to Friday. She continues to work well with her children and the rest of the children in the setting. Oana works well ensuring that she has resources and activities planned to make sure her next steps for her children’s development are met. Oana is also SENCO qualified and offers great support.
Grace works Monday to Friday and qualified as an Early Years Educator in January 2020. She brings great IT skills to the setting, helping all staff with any IT issues they have. She has good patience is all I can say to that! Grace has updated our Website; however, it does have new information which needs to be updated, which will be completed soon. She is our youngest member of the team and is full of enthusiasm. Grace also prepares work for the children in her group, making sure the theme is connected to their interests.
All staff continue to provide excellent care and encouragement to the children, to help them achieve their goals by planning challenging activities to help reach their learning development. All ideas are shared with other staff. Praise is always given to the children by staff and I thank my staff daily for their hard work.
Claudia Sylvester is currently our Lunch time Supervisor. Claudia was originally employed for the Breakfast Club we first opened in September 2018. The children from St Anselm’s School attended as well as the children from Stepping Stones. Due to the government guidelines, we decided that it was not possible for us to mix the two groups together as it would not be safe, so therefore from March 23[rd] , our very first lockdown, we have not been able to re-open the breakfast club. Since October 2020, Claudia now comes into the preschool for her lunchtime hours only. She is a fantastic help to us, especially with the daily resource washing we have to do, and keeps the kitchen and our equipment spotless!
Nuala Guiney is our book keeper and has set up a system for our accounts. She is in charge of all incoming/outgoing expenditure, invoices for the preschool, and all other account
Records. Nuala also gets everything ready to submit to our accountant for our charity end of the year accounts, and then to the Charity commissioner, which gets submitted by October 31[st] each year.
Katherine Jones is our fundraiser Organiser. We are extremely grateful to Kat for all her enthusiasm she has in organizing events to help us raise money for our preschool. Unfortunately, we have not been able to complete any fundraising ideas outside the preschool this year, but thank Kat for her efforts in getting donations from shops for our hampers when we have had our raffles.
This year has been a totally different experience for us, finding ourselves in a situation we never thought we would have to face, the COVID19 Pandemic.
As you are aware, we have all had to follow, in your own home/work lives, government guidelines in the way we are living/working. This is something that has affected every single one of us, and has been a hard journey for us all.
At Stepping Stones we have made a lot of changes in the way we have had to re-structure our preschool, to enable us to keep things safe for all those who attend, especially our staff and children.
You will be all aware of the risk assessments and policies we are following in order for us to open safely and to ensure guidelines are followed. I regularly receive up to date information from our local Early Years department and Early Years Alliance whom we are members off, to make sure we are following the correct procedures. Unfortunately, we have had to change the way our children enter and leave the setting, and we are not allowing parents to come past the gates. This is different for us as we have always been used to parent/carers being able to come inside and talk to myself or keypersons on a daily basis. This had to change to make the setting a safe place.
I can honestly say this has been an extremely hard year for us as a preschool, as especially when we had to close and was not able to open for the children who was on our register at that time. Stepping Stones followed the guidelines at all times. We closed from 23[rd] March to 1[st] June 2020.
During that time, all staff were “furloughed” apart from myself, as being the manager, was the point of contact for everyone and all information received from Early Years at Harrow Council, keeping up to date with the guidelines, all committee members, Staff, Parents and most importantly, providing our children with daily videos to continue to help with their learning development. I know this was a hard time for everyone, as some parents were still having to go into work, especially our key workers, who we thank so much.
We were able to open once again from 1[st] June 2020. We updated our Risk Assessments and Policies to coincide with all the new guidelines, and updated the policies accordingly. All this information was sent out to parents before their child returned to preschool.
Due to guidelines we have had to follow, we have not been able to reopen the Breakfast Club for St Anselm’s children as we do not have the space to accommodate them safely and then be ready for Stepping Stones Children at 8.55am. We will re- consider this at all times and will hopefully re-open when it is safe to do so.
We re-opened Stepping Stones on the 3[rd] June 2020, after the staff and myself carried out a deep clean of all our resources. Parents were given the option to allow their children to return to Pre School from the 3[rd] June, start them back week commencing the 29[th] June or not until September. 15 children returned in June and 13 followed from 29[th] June.
Due to the number of children returning, and the loss of fees from the term before, we found it beneficial to open the preschool on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from June, and from 29[th] June we opened Monday to Thursday.
Children attended in small groups of no more than 5 in each and with their key person. Each group had their own area in the setting and a garden area. Unfortunately, we were unable to organize our usual summer activities which we missed so much, e.g. Willows Farm Summer trip, Sports day, visits to the parks for our sessions and our children’s Graduation. We felt extremely sad for the children and parents who missed out on these activities.
This is our first term for this year, and we aim to have another great, but slightly different year at Stepping Stones for the Parents/carers and off course the children. We will provide the children with activities and learning resources to encourage their learning development to the best of their ability. We really hope we will be able to go back to all our usual activities so that we can show you how your children have progressed.
I would like to say a special thank you to all the staff, who make our setting a warm and caring environment, where we hope you and your child feel secure, happy and feel that your child is encouraged to reach their learning goals.
A big Thank You to all the parent and carers who has supported us and respected our policies we have had to put in place due to Covid. I know this would have been difficult for you as many of you have children who have been with us for the first time and you still have trusted us even though you have only been able to visit our setting once at your child’s taster session.
I would like to also thank Peter Boonman our Chairperson who has been part of our committee over the past year and has kindly offered to continue to support us. His Charity knowledge and experience is greatly appreciated.
I thank Mariana Lossiana-Kelly for being our Secretary and Emily Morton for being our treasurer. They have both helped us throughout the year at our meetings and especially their help during Lockdown was greatly appreciated.
It has been a certainly different year at Stepping Stones, especially between March and June, but we feel positive that things are getting better and our children are once again forming great relationships between staff, and starting to feel secure once again. it’s a great pleasure to have you all at our preschool. We feel that by working together, we have and are able to build great relationships with all your families.
Thank you all for continuous support and loyalty to our pre-school.
Donna Hoare Pre School Manager
Xero | Profit & Loss | Stepping Stones Pre-school/Breakfast Club
23/10/2021, 10:53
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Stepping Stones Pre-school/Breakfast Club - Profit & Loss
Profit & Loss
Stepping Stones Pre-school/Breakfast Club 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020
Cash Basis
Add Summary
| 31 Dec 20 25,808.75 |
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|---|---|---|
| Income | ||
| Playgroup Income | ||
| Funding/Fundraising | 67,021.03 2,054.56 69,075.59 94,884.34 94,884.34 7,692.00 1,327.00 (139.32) 8,879.68 311.27 150.00 189.40 108.00 2,670.85 145.28 684.36 2,400.00 88,830.00 |
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| Funding | ||
| Fundraising (after costs) | ||
| Total Funding/Fundraising | ||
| Total Income | ||
| Gross Profit | ||
| Plus Other Income | ||
| Breakfast Club Income | ||
| Donations | ||
| Other Revenue | ||
| Total Other Income Less Operating Expenses |
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| Administration Costs | ||
| Children's training/external teachers | ||
| DBS Checks | ||
| Entertainment,Outings & Other | ||
| General Costs | ||
| Liability Insurance | ||
| Professional Costs | ||
| Rent | ||
| Salary Costs | ||
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Xero | Proft & Loss | Stepping Stones Pre-school/Breakfast Club
Sessions costs
1,316.91
Staff Training
320.00
Telephone & Internet Costs
575.79
Uniform Costs
257.50
Total Operating Expenses
97,959.36
Net Profit
5,804.66|
|---|---|
https://go.xero.com/Reports/Report2.aspx?reportId=5dc5820d-005f-468f-b818-6d3b00baa6cd&report=&statement=a22c12ce-7b22-49ff-a674-1a509552f6de&a…
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