Children, families and staff at Flexible Childcare Services Scotland’s Dundee services are feeling good, good, good, good after their recent inspection by the Care Inspectorate graded all areas of their service as GOOD. This means strengths outweigh areas for development and is recognition of the hard work the team have put in ensuring the flexible nature of the service does not impact negatively on the quality of experience for children and families.
The team at FCSS’s Dundee service, led by Manager, Lesley Tait, are committed to delivering high quality and understand that to do this in a service where children’s attendance patterns change from week to week and where the core staff team is supplemented by sessional staff to meet flexible booking demands, is no easy task. The team have created effective systems and processes to support quality practice, are excellent communicators and have become skilled at reflection and evaluation. Their hard work has paid off and they were delighted to receive such a positive report from Care Inspectorate.
Inspectors commented positively on staff induction and training, praised the very good infection control practice. The ethos of the service and the holistic support offered to families, including the introduction of fruit bowls, sharing of clothes and fair share link with a local supermarket providing food bags for families was viewed as an area of strength. Parent feedback was noted to be very positive with families praising the support and flexibility of the service, commenting on the positive impact this had for them.
Other noteworthy areas of praise included the significant investment in natural resources and loose parts and the positive impact this had on experiences for children. The layout of the environment was recognised as promoting children’s independence with even the youngest of children moving confidently move around the playroom, accessing their resource of choice.
Service manager, Lesley, said “We have worked very hard to establish and embed systems that support high quality in a flexible setting, the results of this hard work are clearly recognised in the Care Inspectorate Report that has just been published. The staff team have played an integral part in this journey with myself and our Lead Practitioner, Lynda, and have been the driving force to ensure that the standards and quality are of a high standard. We are now looking at the future and outlining the goals we are setting to ensure that standards go from strength to strength, including our aspiration to reach a grading of excellent across all four themes. Thank you to all the families that completed the questionnaire for the inspection, the feedback that we received from these was wonderful.”
