Mind maps

This week was a short one because of the Bank Holiday.  I am looking forward to September 23, the date of the TUPE because at the moment I feel as though I were caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.  Not that either charity has a bad approach at all, it’s just that I have very little information about how the new one will be working and not very much more about how the old one has been running up until now!  

Two days later

Getting to know a new job is always hard.  There is so much information to absorb at once but because of the looming TUPE it’s so hard to know what will stay the same and what will change.  However yesterday I had a useful meeting with the new charity and the a supervision with the line manager in the old one so I feel a bit better than I did when I wrote the paragraph above.  Theoretically I feel a lot more confident about my ability to effect positive changes on what goes on in the rooms for the children than I do in making a business which is running at a loss into a profitable concern; but I seem to need to spend more time  working on the latter than on the former which is where my heart is.  I guess I have to do both.

Today is my day off and I have made wild plum jam and been for a swim, but also spent time sitting on the living room floor making mind maps of aspects of the nursery.  So far one on providing a high quality service from the children’s point of view and the other on making a smooth transition to the new management.  I need to do others of course.  Maybe one with ‘Sustainability’ as the aim, also probably “Moving to a green RAG’ and ‘Preparation for OfSTED’.  Indeed I need to get on with the OfSTED one as they are bound to come in the next few months following notification of new manager.

Bank Holiday Weekend

I have managed to fit in a fair bit of rambling of both varieties this week.  The walks have all been quite different from each other.  Last Monday an old friend came to visit on the way to a course.  After supper we ambled down the lane because years ago when he was at Uni he had a friend who lived in a room in the Mill and he wanted to see if it was still as he remembered it.  The light was fading slowly by the time we left my house, and as we leaned with our elbows on the brick side of the Mill bridge a heron flapped lazily over the water meadow.  We did a circuit of the nature reserve in the warm dusk.  Always less respectful of ‘Keep Out’ notices than I will ever be he stepped over the pump house gates to inspect the weir closely and comment on the difference in height between the river and the lower meadow.  On the path back to the Mill we walked between high hedges in virtual blackness and I reflected that I would probably never walk at this time on my own but I was not at all frightened.  It was warm and quiet apart from the breeze in the trees, the trickling of the river and the odd bird sounding its last call of the day.

On Saturday I was walking in an utterly different woodland setting with a friend and her three daughters.  Fairhaven Water Garden is a curiously attractive place, a cross between an English wood and a garden.  There are many imported plants amongst the oak, beech and hazel.  Alder and willow line the edges of the Broad.  Luminous pink and white hydrangeas stood out against the lush greenery which appeared blurred by the drizzling rain. Flowers which I couldn’t name but which I recognised from Malawi mingled with milk parsley, the food of the swallowtail butterfly, quantities of water mint and giant Gunnera in an unexpected but delightful medley of vegetation.

Sunday saw me stomping along the lanes near home again.  This time my plan was to spot the fruit trees in the hedgerows and note where they were in preparation for having a jamming weekend in a couple of week’s time.  I did well, identifying two cherries, many small, sweet, yellow plums, some purply plums, perhaps Bullace, sloes, elderberries and three or four crab apples.  I set out to retrace our steps of Monday night and look at the nature reserve in broad daylight.  As I turned the corner onto the Mill bridge I thought I might sit down when I got to the reserve and watch for a while, hoping I would see a bird or two, maybe even a kingfisher.  The thought had barely left my mind when a streak of iridescent turquoise shot across the mill pond from a culvert under the road towards the water meadows.  Needless to say I did not see another in the reserve!

Today I started the day with the idea of going to the seaside but after calling a couple of friends but failing to raise a companion I decided that perhaps I too should not spend the whole day in idleness and devised a more local walk that would leave some time for the chores as well as for pleasure!  I parked by the church in a village about eight miles away  from home and walked in a circle which took in farmland; oak woods; river; a path lined with coppiced hazel with plenty of nuts, not ripe yet of course; a lane where the branches of the trees either side met in the middle; a garden centre, with coffee shop; and a village green on the bend of the river where families picnicked and children frolicked in the shallow water.  My favourite moment was watching the fish hanging in the warm shallow water at a bend in the river and the bright blue bodies and black-tipped wings of dragonflies, (or were they damsel flies?) zig-zagging along a few inches above the rippling brown river.

All this walking gives plenty of time for contemplation and that slow processing of information that seems to precede my ability to make important decisions about priorities in situations such as that facing me in the nursery.  There are so many different ways and orders in which the problems of the nursery could be approached and of course there are probably many right ways.  Perhaps over the next week the various embryo plans in my head will slot themselves into a logical sequence and become an action plan!

Oh! Soooo much to do!

Working four ten hour shifts for a basic working week seems to make time fly past.  My normal working week is 7.45am-6.15pm on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.  This means that I never work more than two days together which truly is a bonus!  However my term and conditions state that I am expected to work a 37 hour week and this doesn't really compute!  Fortunately I never was much of a clock-watcher.  By the time I get home I am pretty tired and have done far too much slumping in front of the TV, but I hope I shall get more used to it.  Term begins again in a couple of weeks so regular week night events will start again and I am determined to have a social life of some sort despite the demands of the job.

The date for our TUPE from one charity to another is getting inexorably closer.  We had a meeting with HR reps and others from both organisations last week and many of our questions were answered.  It looks like the new organisation is very experienced at running nurseries and has good training in place so there should be excellent support.

From day to day I am steadily working my way through policies, procedures and risk assessments and trying to get to grips with the action plan produced by the temporary manager to get ourselves out of being considered a setting of concern.  Very sensibly she has begun with all those identified deficiencies which contravene the law and most of these changes are in place and at least beginning to become embedded in practice.  There is plenty left to do however in order to make the setting really good.  So much that I have moments close to despair when I think of the difference between the way things are now and the way I would like them to be!  I am continuing to try to talk to all the staff members in turn but because we are so short of staff it is hard to find time when I can take someone out of a room and still maintain legal ratios to supervise the children.  I have realised that as I plan the rotas for the next week I have to identify times when I can do it, otherwise opportunities go by.  The staff are keen to use these few periods when we have enough people to take time out to work on the children's records and the Team Leaders need planning time.  This is a good thing.  They all do seem motivated to turn things around and regain a reputation as a good nursery.  Of course, 'Good' won't be enough for me; I want it to be 'Outstanding'.  However as OfSTED are ready to admit the bar has been raised lately and as we are overdue an inspection already I cannot imagine I will have time to pull things up enough before the next time they visit.

Prioritisation is so difficult when everything is important!

Next week I want to focus on observation and planning but I also have a meeting with LA representatives on Friday so I will have to spend time seeking out the evidence they require to prove that the action plan is being implemented. 

On Friday we all went out for a meal to say 'Goodbye' to the temporary manager.  It was nice to be invited and to see the team in relaxed mode.  I believe everyone will be very sorry to see her go and the team will miss the support she has given them.  I know that stepping into her shoes will be quite a challenge!

First full week

Last weekend I had a delightful day at the seaside with an old friend.  Just the right combination of sea, sand, fish and chips, gentle strolls and that companionship that fits like a comfortable jacket from the back of the wardrobe.  I can’t say we went for a walk but we ambled up the prom enjoying first the people and the beach huts and then the open stretches of sand and pebbles, the crumbling cliffs and the relative solitude only a couple of hundred metres from the busy prom and pier.  There was a lot of seaweed, and both being Radio 4 listeners, we had heard last weeks’ programme about collecting edible seaweeds from a beach in Cornwall and were able to identify and taste Fucus vesiculosus from the low water mark.  This beach is well known for witch stones with round holes worn through by the water, often seen arranged around local houses to keep the witches away, so I had one eye to the ground in case I saw one and the other to the horizon for that sense of space, air and the regular patterns of time and tide that put the viscissitudes of daily life into proportion.

At seven forty-five on Monday morning it was straight back to the viscissitudes!  First job was to find the children’s registers for the week.  That’s the trouble with a new job, even the little administrative details following their usual pattern are a challenge.  I am so lucky in that I have the woman who has been a very capable acting manager and set the Action Plan for pulling the nursery out of trouble, to shadow for the first two weeks.  It is easy to feel overwhelmed when everything is new at the same time.  I learned by spending the second day entirely in the office that in order to stay grounded I am a person who needs to see and interact with the children and staff every day, certainly at the beginning. 

I have started to arrange and carry out staff interviews, starting with the more senior staff with the dual purpose of identifying their strengths and interests and discovering their feelings about the rapid decline in quality of the nursery and the process of support offered to get out of being considered as a ‘setting of concern’.  It is early days to be sure but my feeling is that I have a highly qualified and skilled workforce in comparison with the average nursery.  So why did the standards fall so low and so fast?  Certainly they have had several people in the management role in the last year, so lots of changes, but my gut feeling is that the difficulties go further back.  My observations of practice in the rooms show me that while there are certainly difficulties there are also some lovely, supportive and positive relationships with children.  So many of the problems of staff seem to be directly related to low staffing levels and over reliance on agency staff who don’t know the children.  This has largely been sorted before I arrived.  My own appointment precedes the starting date of four or five other staff by only two or three weeks.

There is so much information to be absorbed that there are many points at which I feel that my head is about to explode.  I have found that the best antidote is to go out into the nursery and talk to a child!  One little boy asked me “Which room are you in today?” and was a bit disappointed when I said “The office, I am afraid”.  “You should be in here" (the pre-school room) he said.  Perhaps I should have explained that I shall be in all the rooms at different times.  That’s a better way for both of us to think about where I am really based!

First two days

Well, I’ve finally begun the new job.  There have been the usual problems with paperwork and agreement over precise terms and conditions and I find myself working under a risk assessment because my CRB check has not returned yet.  I cannot understand why, as it is the fourth I have had since January and I certainly have not been convicted of any offenses against children since the last one, or indeed ever!.  In practice I can do anything except be left alone with children or change a nappy.

My nursery is in a children’s centre that was a phase one Sure Start Children’s Centre with the local authority as the lead body but was recently taken over by a national charity.  Unfortunately running day care does not fall within the aims and objectives of that charity and so in a couple of week’s time the nursery will be handed over to a second charity.  This means that for the first time the nursery will be run independently from the rest of the Children’s Centre.  I hope that in practical day to day terms this will not affect the excellent partnership working which has historically occurred between nursery and other professionals working in the Centre.  Indeed this is the point of Sure Start Centres in the first place.  However in my darker moments I fear that it could become a bureaucratic nightmare.  At the moment we share a stationary cupboard, financial support, ordering systems, staff cover by early years professionals.... so many things!  I do so hope that we are not going to lose all this.

All this change, and also other factors I am sure that I have yet to discover, means that the nursery is not in a very good state and despite an outstanding Ofsted in 2010, is currently a ‘setting of concern’ the equivalent of ‘special measures’, and getting support from the County Council to pull its socks up!  There is an action plan.  It is being followed. The temporary managers have made huge efforts to turn the corner and improve standards again but there is still a lot to do.

Despite all this and a rather scary level of responsibility about to land on my shoulders I have enjoyed large parts of the last two days.  I have spent as much time as I could in the day care rooms getting to know staff and children.  There seems to be a huge amount of will to put the last, difficult months behind us and become recognized as an excellent nursery again.  Nevertheless the staff appear rather battered and bruised by their recent experiences.  I suppose there are not any nice ways of telling people that their practice is just not good enough, but no one is totally disastrous in all aspects of their work. Surely good management practice would teach us to sandwich criticism between nuggets of positive feedback and identify and build on the particular strengths of individuals but this group of workers feel unvalued and knocked back by a barrage of negativity.  Yet in my two days I have seen much that is at least beginning to go in the right direction and can be developed and refined.  Yesterday I watched a practitioner reading to a group of 3-5-year-olds with great expression and lots of funny voices.  The children’s eyes were fixed upon her face and their little bodies leaned towards her.  As she turned the page the group swayed slightly as one body as their attention moved from one side of the big book to the other.  OK she could have thought about how excited the story was going to make them and gently brought down the level of involvement in the way she talked about the story afterwards and thus avoided the noisiness which she told them off about, but all bad?  Definitely not.

New blog begins

I am sitting in the bright sunshine in the back garden of my auntie’s house in Exeter.  Next Thursday I start a new job as Nursery manager in a Children’s Centre.  I confess it is not ideally what I want to be doing with my life right now but I am sure it will be better than the hotch potch of temporary jobs with which I have filled my time in the last six months.  Don’t misunderstand me, I have enjoyed them, especially doing one-to-one support for a four-year-old who is probably somewhere on the autistic spectrum, but the average wage for them all was well under £10.00 an hour and I am fed up with being supervised by less qualified and experience people who do not always put the child’s experience at the centre of their decision-making.  Of course that is not always as simple as it sounds, the system in which we work does not always put the child’s experience at the centre of the rules and recommendations that we have to follow, but for me that should be a constant reference point.  I confess that lately I have often found it difficult to keep my mouth shut so I am looking forward to a job where quality of service is my responsibility and I have a duty to say what I think!   I have been teaching others how to run good services for children for most of the last four or five years.  Now is my chance to see whether I can actually do it myself!

A little tributary to the river Exe runs across the bottom of this garden and invading Himalayan Balsam provides the only splashes of colour apart from a pot of marigolds next to the kitchen door.  The grass is tidily trimmed but the beds are neglected, offering only shades of green, but I can hear the wind shimmering the leaves of the silver birch and something is rustling in the Gunnera beside the pond.  The cats are enjoying the sunshine and my auntie is resting upstairs.

I guess this week between the ending of all my temporary jobs and the beginning of a proper job is a time for reflection and relaxation before the fray.  The nursery I am going to has been outstanding in the past but it has been going through a bad patch and it has been difficult for me to understand exactly why.  I hope that it will become clear quickly so that I know how to approach the problem of falling standards.