The Cornerstone team is led by two directors, Nicholas NG, a Chartered Accountant and Elizabeth Johnson who is a consultant, author and a certified trainer in Early Years. She is also the Nominated person with Ofsted. She is directly assisted by the nursery manager, Brigitte Loizeau and deputy manager Titilope Akintola.
Each room is led by an experienced and qualified member of staff.
All our permanent staff are level 3 and above. We have our regular bank staff who are both qualified and unqualified and we welcome apprentices in childcare.
Cornerstone is training -driven as we are aware of the importance of ongoing professional development.
We have a qualified French chef and a housekeeper. We provide in-house, online and face-to-face training in a variety of ways to all our staff.
All staff are fully checked through the (DBS) Disclosure and Barring Service and they hold Paediatric First Aid, Safeguarding, Health and Safety, Fire Prevention in addition to their relevant Childcare qualifications.
Our staff are selected carefully and chosen on their qualifications, experience and personal qualities. Teamwork is very important to us as children need to have positive role models who respect and value each other and work well together. Our staff attend regular staff meetings, training sessions and courses to ensure they are constantly up to date in nursery practice. All members of staff are DBS checked.
Staff ratios are as follows:
5mths-2yrs 1 member of staff to 3 children
2-3 yrs 1 member of staff to 4 children
3-5 yrs 1 member of staff to 8 children
Nappy changing takes place at regular intervals during the day. We provide nappies for children under the age of two years.
Key Person / Buddy System
At Cornerstone Day Nursery & Pre-school, we understand how important it is that you and your children feel like a part of our family. Our key person approach, to working with you and your child helps us to achieve this. In the beginning, a key person is someone who pays special attention to a child and their family, the main person who settles the child into the nursery and is the person with whom parents can build up a relationship of trust. Whenever possible, it is the key person who changes nappies, sits with the child at lunch to support them in eating and feeding, settles them to sleep, comforts them if they become upset or unsure, greets them in the morning and helps them to say goodbye to parents and settle quickly into play. The key person also maintains their child’s developmental records and conducts parents evening annually. (Please remember that your child’s key person will sometimes be on annual leave, or even suffer from illness themselves, and so however much we strive to implement the ideal key person method, there will be times when your child’s key person will not be available to care for him or her. On these occasions we try to ensure a backup or buddy person has a strong enough connection with your child to step in).
As time goes on this aspect of the role becomes less important as children very quickly make healthy bonds and relationships with all the adults in the room. Cornerstone Day Nursery& Pre-school encourages and supports this so that by the time children are ready to start ‘Big School’, they are confident in being able to relate to several adults outside of the family, and function well in wider society and the types of groups they will experience throughout life.
The key person’s role becomes more one of responsibility as your child completes their settling in weeks. The key person is responsible for ensuring that regular observations on a child’s progress are carried out, collating the information, summarising it, entering it into a child’s learning journal, and meeting with parents to share the child’s progress, firstly after 6-8 weeks then annually. The key person will also remain the key point of contact for parents and parents are welcome to request to discuss their child’s progress. Daily feedback will also be given to parents every time their child is in attendance at our nursery. We assign a key person at the very first settling in session, because our childcare expertise tells us that the transition from home to nursery goes much smoother for all concerned if there is one specific person who manages the process.