LEAD TEACHER

The Lead teacher works as a member of the senior management team in a Children's Centre to lead and support the practitioners both within a Centre and through other local schools and early years settings to improve the quality of learning and teaching, through the development and delivery of a high quality curriculum and range of learning opportunities for all children, aged 0-5 years. Jan Palmer has been appointed to take up this role and will spend 2.5 days a week leading the Foundation Stage across both the school and Mama Bears.  Teresa Hore has been appointed to backfill the 2.5 days Jan will be working as Lead Teacher and both teachers will be working together for a period of time whilst the youngest children in the nursery settle into school life.

Trained Speech and Language Therapists will train and support staff to enable them to support children across the Foundation Stage.  They will provide support for individual children and work with the locality therapist.  Staff in the Children’s centre will be supported to run groups and to train and support parents/carers to help their children with communication skills.  They will also deliver an outreach service.  Two year olds will be provided with a screening and this will be repeated at the end of the nursery school year

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Children’s Centre’s can make a huge difference to the lives of children and families.  The following is an extract from how a designated children’s centre has made a difference to lives within a very short period of time: 

“Louise and Sean are local parents whose children attend local schools and as they are now growing up both Louise and Sean want to get back into work.  To help them gain experience the

Children’s Centre has offered them volunteer experience and they have been supported in getting CRB clearance. 

We hope this will give them the confidence to progress into further training, now they have links with other services.  We are also very grateful they want to work with us and give something back to their community.

Jenny is a single parent in our local community who has accessed childcare through the Children’s Centre.  This term Jenny has been successful in getting herself a job as a dinner lady in the school and has had advice and support from our centre and the community family worker to support her job application.

Both Jenny and Louise are active members of the Children’s Centre management committee which is our local governing body.  

(Please note the names of these parents have been changed)

If you would like more information please contact Dawn Butler on 0117 9037420 or mail dawn.butler@bristol.gov.uk

Children’s Centre Advisory Board – What is it?

The Advisory Board is a group of people who are interested in what goes on at the Children’s Centre.

They attend regular meetings to share information about all the activities that are happening at the Children’s Centre and to make sure that it is being used as efficiently as possible.

There are lots of different people who attend these regular meetings. These people include:

• Children’s Centre staff

• A school governor

• A representative from Mama Bears Day Nursery

• Parents who use the Children’s Centre

• Representatives from other groups that use the Children’s Centre eg. child minders and Health Visitors

• Head Teacher at Broomhill Infants School

• Members of the local community in Broomhill who support the work of the Children’s Centre

It is really important that the people who use the Children’s Centre ie. families who live in the area, are getting what they want out of the Centre. The Advisory Board gives everyone the opportunity to have their say and suggest ways of improving services.

It also gives the people who work at the Children’s Centre the opportunity of letting the other Board members know about any new activities that are going on there.

Sometimes decisions have to be made about the Children’s Centre that may affect the Infant School. The Advisory Board will suggest ideas which then need to go to the school governors who will make sure that the proposals will be good for the whole school.

Any parents or carers who would like to come to an Advisory Board meeting would be very welcome as their views about the Children’s Centre are really important for planning future activities. All you would need to do is speak to Lesley Newman, who is the Leader of the Children’s Centre for more information.