The Relevance of The Tittle to Children’s Education

The relevance of the tittle to children’s education is that safeguarding is essential in ensuring children can learn and achieve. For example, the EYPS should check the environment is safe and secure for play, this means children can develop and thrive. According to C. Meggitt and T. Bruce, Child & Education Early Years Educator, 2015, the setting should: “ensure that children are kept safe and that staff are aware of hazards in the learning environment”. Children all have a right to be kept safe.

Settings play a key role in safeguarding children. They have regular contact with the children and can identify any concerns and therefore ensure children are able to learn and develop. The Working together to safeguard children (2015), defines safeguarding as, “Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is defined for the purposes of this guidance as: protecting children from maltreatment; preventing impairment of children’s health or development; ensuring that children grow up in circumstances consistent with the provision of safe and effective care; and taking action to enable all children to have the best outcomes”. This highlights the role of the EYP in ensuring activities and learning opportunities are planned to help children to have a good start in life, this also means the EYP should ensure the environment is safe and that children can achieve. According to Early Years Matters 2018, “The environment plays a key role in supporting and extending children’s development and learning. When children feel safe and secure they are able to explore and find out about the place they are in and the things they can see, touch, manoeuvre or manipulate.”

Children’s safety is always the main priority and any potential hazards should be identified and steps taken to minimise risks, this helps children to be confident to explore and be confident in their play. The impact of abuse or neglect on a child’s education is significant; the setting must be aware of observing children and being aware of any signs and symptoms of concern. The Early Years Foundation Stage 2017 (EYFS) states that the “setting must ensure that children learn and develop well and are kept healthy and safe.”

D2- Effective practice regarding the well-being of the children is about having secure attachments. In C. Meggitt and T. Bruce, Child Care & Education Early Years Educator, 2015, it defines the meaning of attachment as “warm, affectionate and supportive bond between a child and his or her primary carer, which enables the child to develop secure relationships.” Additionally, an example of attachment in an early years setting is the relationship between the Key person and the child; the child’s Key person contributes to a child’s well-being. Furthermore, children are more likely to feel safe and loved when the same familiar people are looking after them every day. Therefore, by the early year setting allocating each child a key person it will ensure the children have a familiar adult in the setting, consequently, this will make the children feel comfortable in the setting as they have someone who knows them well. Furthermore, this will help with the child’s well-being as the children will feel secure and safe as the Key persons role according to the EYFS Framework 2017, “Is to help ensure that every child’s care is tailored to meet their individual needs, to help the child become familiar with the setting, offer a settled relationship for the child and build a relationship with their parents.”

Another example of how EYPS can have effective practice is working in partnership with parents/carers and other professionals. According to C. Meggitt and T. Bruce, Childcare & Education, Early Years educator 2015, Partnership working is “Parents, families, practitioners and other professionals actively working together”. Leading on from this, it is key in helping children’s well-being because when a child has an effective support system the child will feel emotionally secure. Additionally, this is relevant to the tittle because when working in partnership it allows the EYPS to get to know the child and their family, which will in turn make communicating any problems and issues regarding the child easier to discuss, this is because the parent or carer will feel comfortable discussing personal issues. An example of how this links to safeguarding is if the child’s family are un able to afford necessities for the child for example meals, school uniform and electricity for the house, the EYPS can get in touch with the local safeguarding board which can offer the family additional support. However, if the parent or carer of the child did not feel comfortable discussing personal issues with the EYP, the child and their family may not get the help they need. Furthermore, this example highlights how important it is for partnership working as it can improve children’s well-being.

C1- There are many safeguarding procedures in an early years setting, for example reporting and recording information accurately and coherently, it is important that EYPs follow the correct procedure of recording and reporting information to be sure that the right people know and the right decisions are made with the child’s best interest at heart. The procedure to follow would depend on what and who the safeguarding issue involved. An example would be if the EYP suspected a child was being neglected at home they would: believe the child, listen carefully to the child, take it seriously and reassure the child they are right to tell.

Furthermore, the procedure of recording and sharing information is that the EYP notes down exactly what the child has said, the time, date, who was there, where it took place and it needs to be signed by the EYP. Once the EYP has wrote down the information, the information can be shared with the settings child protection officer, according to C. Meggitt and T. Bruce, Childcare & Education Early Years Educator, 2015, it states the procedure of sharing the information “Unless you are the setting’s child protection officer, your role in relation to sharing information would be to pass on concerns to those who need to know and to ensure that confidentiality is observed.” However, if the settings safeguarding officer does not seem to take what the EYP has reported seriously and the EYP thinks that the child is in danger of more harm, the EYPS has a right to go to the local authority and report what the child has said. Therefore, this is relevant to the tittle as it is important that the EYPS do not discuss safeguarding issues with each other as that would be breaking confidentiality and would be going against the child’s rights of keeping information enclosed and private.

Secondly another safeguarding procedure relevant to the tittle is storing information in the EYFS Framework 2017 it states the outlines nursery’s must follow when storing information “Providers must maintain records and obtain and share information (with parents and carers, other professionals working with the child, the police, social services and Ofsted or the child-minder agency with which they are registered, as appropriate) to ensure the safe and efficient management of the setting, and to help ensure the needs of all children are met.”

Furthermore, confidential information and records about staff and children must be held securely and only accessible and available to those who have a right or professional need to see them. Settings must be aware of their responsibilities under the Data Protection Act (DPA) 1998 and where relevant the Freedom of Information Act 2000; this is to ensure the right procedures are being followed when storing information. Additionally, at my placement all the staff and children’s records are kept in a locked filling cabinet, the manager keeps the key at all times to ensure confidentiality. Also, by having the cabinet locked at all times it is ensuring that all the information is safe because the information is not accessible therefore, this links to the tittle as it is preventing people misusing the records, therefore, safeguarding the children.