Supervision of Children Policy

At Winston’s Place Day Nursery, we have suitable staffing arrangements to meet the needs of all children and ensure their safety. The nursery manager is responsible for ensuring that all staff, students, relief and agency staff are appropriately inducted, vetted, and informed of health and safety and safeguarding policies and procedures in order to supervise children effectively, including while children are eating.

Supervision of children

We ensure that children are supervised adequately at all times, whether children are in or out of the building, including eating through:
• Appropriately deploying staff members who meet statutory staff: child ration and qualification requirements to ensure children’s needs are met and continuously monitoring deployment across the setting. This includes informing parents where relevant about staff deployment
• Making sure that every child is always within the sight and/or hearing of a suitably vetted, trained, and deployed member of staff
• Completing registers as soon as children enter and leave the premises and carrying out regular headcounts throughout the day, including during transitions, outdoor play, and outings
• Risk assessing activities, experiences and equipment to ensure children are not exposed to unnecessary risks, including removal of any choking hazards and providing enhanced supervision for activities that present additional risk
• Ensuring children are fully supervised at all times when involved in all types of water play as we are aware that children can drown in only a few centimetres of water
• Taking special care when children are using large apparatus e.g. a climbing frame, and when walking up or down steps or stair
• Support children to identify, minimise and manage risks in their play in their play in line with EYFS requirements to teach children about risk safely
• Making sure staff recognise and are aware of any dangers relating to bushes, shrubs and plants when on visits or outdoors
• Supervising children at all times when eating, monitoring toddlers and babies closely and never leaving babies alone with a bottle. Babies are always bottle fed by a member of staff
• Supervising sleeping babies and children and never leaving them unattended
• Never leaving babies or children unattended during nappy changing times
• Supervising children carefully when using scissors or tools, including using knives in cooking activities where this is required
• Increasing staff: child ratios during outings to ensure supervision and safety (please refer to Visits and outings policy)
• Strictly following any safety guidelines given by other organisations or companies relating to the hire of equipment or services e.g. hire of a bouncy castle
• Ensuring at all times that a member of staff is present and actively supervising children; children are never left unsupervised under any circumstances