Communication
with Families
Prime
Contact / Key Worker Role
There’s still some confusion about this although it was really
good to hear that most people know who their prime contact is and
a number of people can broadly describe their role. We have attached
our “Communication with Families” policy which we hope
will provide clarity on this.
Communication
Books
It seems that the introduction of the green, yellow and red communication
books has been received positively; this is really pleasing as it
was a direct result of feedback from families that they were implemented.
We do try to complete them as fully as possible and we also prioritise
the children over completion of these books so occasionally there
will be times where something happens and it’s more difficult
to fill in the book entirely.
Thank you to those people who use the communication books to give
us information, it is really helpful to hear what you child has
been up to and often we can make links between this information
and things that happen during the day.
Notice
of Dates
We will try to give as much notice as possible for service closures.
In the nursery we will send out an updated term dates sheet in January
once we have set dates for the calendar year ahead. We do tend to
find that reminders nearer the time are appreciated by families
and we will either put these into the yellow book or contact families
in person. We are always looking for ways to tighten up on communication
and we will trial the suggestion of sending all letters etc home
in the yellow book, sometimes this hasn’t work in the past
as the yellow book comes back the following day with the letters
still inside.
Treetops
dates are now being sent out two months in advance and more recent
feedback from families has indicated that this has been very well
received.
TAC
Paperwork
This
is currently being revised, thank you for your feedback. Hopefully
when the new format is introduced it will be easier to read, we
would welcome your feedback on this.
Sharing
of Nursery Parents Contact Details
There was a request to send out a list of contact details of the
families who attend nursery. This isn’t something we would
take on ourselves but if one of the nursery parents wants to take
this on, much in the same way as some of the schools do, we would
be very happy for this to happen. Please do let us know.
Staff
Communication
Due to the scope of service provided by White Lodge we have to make
sure that the communication between staff across the various different
areas is good and as tight as possible. This isn’t always
easy due to the number of people that work for the organisation
but the results of the audit show that that on the vast majority
of occasions this is successful. Some of the things we have in place
to help are:
- the addition of the prime contact role
- a weekly meeting between the nursery and therapy staff focussing
on children
- the monthly referral and planning (RAP) meeting focusing on children
who use family link, Treetops, domiciliary and out of school activities.
- key worker updates in staff meetings
- discussion about key children in staff supervisions.
We constantly
endeavour to ensure that these systems work, it appears that on
a couple of occasions it has slipped. If you do experience this
please do speak to either your prime contact or a co-ordinator at
the time so that we can resolve any difficulties at the earliest
possible opportunity, this may also help us to identify ways in
which we can further improve the systems.
Skills
The vast majority of responses were extremely positive in relation
to staff skills, understanding of children’s needs and support.
We constantly strive to ensure children achieve to their full potential
and although we do this we are also led by their family, and the
amount that each family likes us to stretch their children does
vary. Again please do let us know if you think we should be doing
more.
Activities
We
have recently set up an Activity Steering Group and representatives
from the various different parts of ChYPS sit on this group. The
aim is to further develop the range of activities on offer across
the ChYPS by pooling the ideas of the staff team rather than each
part focussing on their own activities. Ultimately we will develop
a library of resources around particular themes, e.g. around the
world, which will include onsite activities, entertainers / workshops
that may visit and outings. Eventually this is a resource we would
like to make available to families. In the meantime if you have
any leaflets or information about activities and outings you have
undertaken, either successfully or not so, please do let us know.
You can send things to the “activity steering group”
at White Lodge or just drop them in to reception.
One of the documents
we use for activity planning is the All About Me so please do make
sure that your son or daughters preferred activities are clearly
on this.
In addition
we have changed the way we do the planning for the play and youth
schemes. The supervisors for each scheme will now meet ahead of
the flyers being sent out and outline the activity programme. This
means that the flyers will detail the overall activity for that
day, something that has been requested by a number of families.
We are also exploring ways in which the youth schemes can operate
as more of a base from which both activities take place, and young
people go out to access other things. This obviously incorporates
a much larger risk assessment and will take a lot of planning, however
now having successfully run the youth schemes for some time we are
keen to move them on and further develop the opportunities.
For domiciliary
and family link, activities tend to be discussed in more detail
with families, particularly when there are costs to be agreed.
Thank you for
all the suggestions about activities, these were very well received
and will be passed on to the activity steering group.
Meeting
Health Care Needs
We are fortunate in that we have a close working relationship
with the local paediatric nursing teams who provide training for
us on rectal diazepam, epipen, gastrostomy feeding and other health
care needs. We are able to work with children who are oxygen dependent
as we can access training on this, and indeed have done in the past.
This isn’t something we need to employ a nurse to do and shouldn’t
prohibit a child being able to use Treetops, or any other part of
the service. Sometimes the training does take a little while to
access as the paediatric nurses are extremely busy, however they
are very flexible and do fit us in as soon as possible. Sometimes
we may ask you to bring your child to White Lodge on an extra occasion
for training to take place and if you are able to do this it may
help us to speed up the training.
The area of
Surrey in which we are based hasn’t yet finalised their protocol
about the administration of buccal Midazolam which is why we aren’t
yet able to administer it. We have heard that the health trainers
are being trained during the latter part of this term so are hopeful
that our training will be able to take place in the early part of
next year. We have a couple of children who are prescribed buccal
Midazolam for places that are able to administer it. In order to
prevent the children from not accessing services they are also prescribed
rectal Diazepam for when they visit settings who haven’t yet
had the training. In this way children aren’t prevented from
accessing services. We appreciate this must be very frustrating
for families and we are trying to resolve it as soon as possible.
Security
There will be some changes to the doors at Treetops, which
means that only one of the external doors in the front reception
can open at a time. In addition the only way to exit through the
doors will be to be swiped out by a member of staff through each
door individually.
Reception staff do aim to challenge every visitor, sometimes this
is more difficult when the telephone is ringing and there are a
lot of people in the vicinity. After Christmas we will be introducing
a new switchboard which will enable reception staff to answer calls
away from the telephone which will help with this.
Our maintenance team will monitor the use of the car parks, particularly
for people who drive too quickly , we have introduced more signs
but recognise that these don’t always encourage everyone to
slow down.
The back garden is one large area, used by all children, the area
behind Treetops isn’t specifically for Treetops use and the
vast majority of play equipment is actually in the larger area of
the garden. We hadn’t intended that Treetops children would
access the garden via the play room, the decking on the play room
was developed as an extension of the indoor play space. Children
will usually go down to the main garden via the wibbly wobbly way.
A gate is being ordered for the top of the steps down to the garden.
Play
Scheme Dates
We
often have feedback from families saying that they would prefer
summer schemes to run for the whole holidays, rather than just the
first 3 weeks as most do. White Lodge would also like to be able
to do this, both for the families benefit and also because it is
easier to recruit staff for the whole summer period. However most
schools will only allow the first three weeks to be used as they
then will have maintenance work done the following two along with
a deep clean. In addition staff need to go in and start setting
up for the new term. There are a small number of venues that may
be available for the whole summer, but these don’t tend to
be as suitable or well equipped as the schools and may not be considered
appropriate by Ofsted. We will continue to keep an eye out for other
options.
We know that the other play scheme providers that we work closely
with (Link Leisure, Disability Challengers and Redhill and Reigate
YMCA) also have similar difficulties to us as schools do tend to
be the best options.
Quality
Audit Process
In the letter
which accompanies the questionnaire, parents and carers are re-assured
that their comments will not affect the service provision for their
child. Some parents and carers chose not to identify themselves
when returning their completed forms. All comments and constructive
feedback are welcomed and we hope that you would feel able to respond
truthfully. If you have a particular problem or matter you would
like to discuss, please do address this with a member of staff as
it occurs.
Thank you once
again for taking the time to complete the questionnaire this year.
We really do appreciate your comments and have already responded
to some suggestions as well as thinking about ways in which we can
to others.
The
ChYPS Team
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