Settling In & Attachment.

Key Person Approach

John Bowlby was a pioneer of the Attachment Theory 1907-1990 his theory states that children have an innate need for attachment, this helps children feel safe and secure, particularly in the early years. This influenced the Key Person Approach within childcare and educational settings, we support this approach and have seen the positive effect these attachments have on children in our care.

At Footprints Day Nursery we aim to support families to help your child settle into Nursery life with ease, we do this by considering your child’s individual needs and circumstances of each child and their families. Our aim is for children to always feel safe, secure, stimulated, and happy in our nursery environment. The role of the key person is to provide a secure base for children, the key person may represent a secondary attachment figure to a child in our care. From creating strong relationships and attachments we can provide the child with the emotional support and build strong relationships they need to enable them to flourish and develop, this enables the child to feel safe enough to go off and explore on his/her own.

We work hard to build good relationships with our parents and build strong partnerships with our families. Our team of nursery practitioners know the importance of building strong attachments with children. They are trained to recognise the different stages of attachment and use this knowledge to support children and families settling into the nursery.

The nursery will work in partnership with parents to settle their child into the nursery environment by:

• Allocating a key person to each child and their family before they start. The key person will offer a secure relationship for your child and builds a relationship with parents during the settling in period and throughout their time at nursery this is to ensure the family has a familiar contact person to assist with the settling in process.
• Planning settling in visits which offer flexibly to meet the individual needs of your child and family.
• Recognising that settling in visits are key to a smooth transition and to ensure good communication and information sharing between the team and parents.
• The key person welcomes and looks after your child ensuring that their care and education needs are tailored before your child’s first day
• The key person will find out each child’s current interests and will provide activities surrounding those interests to aid the settling in process.
• Wherever possible it will be the key person carrying out intimate moments and care routines such as nappy changes,
• bottle feeds/ mealtimes and sleep times, to ensure each child feels safe and secure. However, all practitioners will form relationships with all children, to ensure continuity of care in periods of annual leave.
• It is also the responsibility of the key person to keep each child’s learning and development records up to date. We will pprovide parents with relevant information and use the ‘all about me’ as a good starting point.
• The key person is also a good point of contact for parents if they have any information they wish to share about their child or if they would like to express any concerns they may have.
• As children grow and transition between rooms within the nursery the key person will ensure this is a smooth transition for the children, by providing support and reassurance throughout and allowing the child to explore and learn about their new environment freely and also get to know the practitioners within their new room.