Outline the current legislation covering home based childcare and the role of regulatory bodies Essay

?Legislation regulating home based child carer’s and the role of Ofsted the regulatory body All people working with children are governed by legislation that is in place to protect your children and the child care provider. In this document I have listed four important legislations that are of particular importance to home based child care providers and noted how I aim to incorporate them into my practice. Child care practitioners also have a regulatory body; in England it is Ofsted. This document gives you a brief description of their supervisory role in child care settings. However, the list of legislation is not comprehensive and nor is the short description of Ofsted’s Role, if you would like more information or would like to discuss anything written in this leaflet, please ask and I would be happy to provide you as a parent with more details. Children’s Act 1989 & 2004 The first time Children’s rights were recognised under UK Law was in the Children’s Act 1989, which summarised, means ‘the needs of the child are paramount’ (Riddall-Leech 2010 p18). Later, in 2004, the Every Child Matters agenda was born. This is the primary legislative Act that all childcare practitioners must observe. It outlines five conclusions that all children should meet. These are – Be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution and achieve economic well-being. My childcare practice is committed to achieving all the outcomes of the every child matters charter by: – Be healthy By serving homemade healthy balanced meals and snacks. Providing daily opportunities for physical activity both indoors and outside. Ensuring a smoke free environment. Stay safe Everyone who frequently visits the setting including myself and my assistant have enhanced disclosures. There is a zero tolerance of bullying and all children are helped to understand their behaviour if they cause upset or bullying to another child. Enjoy and achieve By providing ample opportunities to experience new environments and activities. Tailoring activities to your child’s likes, needs and working in collaboration with you the parents and any other child care provider you may have. By being supportive, encouraging and positively feeding back to both your child and you. Make a positive contribution By building a trusting positive relationship built on mutual respect. Giving your child the time and attention and to listen to them so they gain confidence feel a part of our community within the setting. Achieve economic well being Although this is a difficult task to achieve for a child care provider in early years I believe we help to set up the foundations of this by teaching the basics of money, the importance of education and by igniting the ambition for knowledge and learning. Childcare Act 2006 When this act was introduced in 2006 it brought about huge changes to home based child care. It requires all child care provider’s to register with Ofsted, the regulating body and that all children up to the age of 5 in child care learn and develop well using the Statutory Early Years Foundation Stage Framework. By using carefully planned monthly topics and activity schemes it will ensure that all adult led and some of the child led play meets the various learning and development goals of the Early Years Foundation Stage. Through observation, both planned and spontaneous, the monthly planned schemes will be tailored to your child’s individual needs and ensure that they are developing to the best of their potential. The learning plans are always available for you to view and you will be able to view your child’s achievements in their ‘Unique Story’ book which will include all observations, examples and photos of their work and anything else your child would like to put in there for you to see. There will also be space for you to write and comment. This act has replaced all previous dicrimation laws and combined them into one Act to protect people from discrimation. Discrimation can come in many forms including religion, beliefs or the lack of either, age, race, disability, nationality and the list goes on. This law proctects people from prejudice and allows legal action to be taken against any person or company who is proven to have unfairly treated any of the protected groups covered by this Act. Everyone is welcome at my childcare service and we strive to ensure that the children learn about the importance of inclusion and the acceptance of others. I try to explain that in many cases it can just be fear of not knowing or understanding but this makes for a fantasic learning experience to discuss and learn about other peoples religions, cultures and so forth and that differences are good. In our play room there are many books, puzzles, pictures and other toys that promote the inclusion and acceptance of all groups of people including disabled, black and other ethnicities and the elderly but to name a few. You may also like to read the equal opportunites policy. The Data Protection Act 1998 The 7th Data Protection principle states ‘The Data Protection Act 1998 requires all organisations to have appropriate security to protect personal information against unlawful or unauthorised use or disclosure, and accidental loss, destruction or damage’ (ICO, 2012. P10). It referes to information that is kept on file whether it be electronically stored, i. e. on a hard drive, a flash drive or paper copies. The Act also gives individuals the right to request copies of all information a business may hold on them within 40 days of the request. The security and protection of yours and your child’s personal information is extremely important. Any information held will be password protected on a computer which has a firewall, Anti-virus software, mal-ware and spy-ware protection, all of which are kept up to date at all times. Your information will never be shared with anyone without your explicit consent, unless it is felt that there was a child protection issue. Any paper documentation is shredded if it is no longer required and we are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office who is the Regulatory Authority. The Home Based Child Carers Regulatory Body Here in England, home-based child carers are regulated and controlled by Ofsted who have four main processes. These processes are in place to ensure that the prospective child care practitioner meets and maintains all the requirements of a suitable carer including understanding and providing learning and development as required by the Statutory Framework in the Early Years Foundation Stage document. They also make sure that the welfare of the children can be met and are continuing to be met after registration. It begins with the process of registering with Ofsted who ensure that the potential carer and any other adult living or working with the practitioner have suitable disclosure checks and are healthy enough to care for children. The carer must also complete the prescribed training including First Aid. Once the carer has been registered, Ofsted make regular checks in the form of inspections to ensure that the setting is being maintained to the required standard, that the carer is continuing to sustain the right environment for the children to learn and develop whilst being kept safe and cared for. The inspector will write a report and grade the child-minder based upon his or her observations during the inspection. These reports should then be made available to parents and are published on the Ofsted website. If a complaint or a concern is made, it is Ofsted’s role to investigate the practitioner and their setting to ensure that they are fulfilling all their safeguarding and welfare demands, regardless and in addition to any inspection that has been carried out. If the investigation shows that the setting is failing in their requirements it is down to Ofsted to enforce changes or to take action against the child carer and the setting. Ofsted help parents and guardians by providing them with information about the setting thereby they can make an informed choice when choosing their child carer for their child/ren. ___________________________________________________________________ Thank you for taking the time to read my leaflet. I hope you found it useful. If you require any further information or if you require this document is larger print and/or another language please let me know. For other languages I will use an online translation service which may take some time please allow 14 days. Thank you. Bengali: This / - ? 14 Chinese: / , 14 Polish: Dziekujemy za poswiecenie czasu na przeczytanie mojej ulotce. MAM nadzieje, ze warto. Jezeli wymagane sa dodatkowe informacje lub jesli chcesz, aby ten dokument jest wiekszy drukuj i/lub innego jezyka prosze da mi zna . W innych jezykach bede korzysta on-line tlumaczenia uslugi, ktora moze zajac troche czasu trwa 14 dni. Dziekujemy. Slovak: Dakujeme vam za as, ktory itat moje letaku. Dufam, ze ste nasli uzito ne. Ak mate zaujem o dalsie informacie alebo ak potrebujete tento dokument je va sie vytla it a/alebo inom jazyku dovolte mi vediet. Pre ine jazyky budem pouzivat on-line prekladatelske sluzby, ktore vsak moze trvat nejaky as prosim nechajte 14 dni. Dakujeme vam. Urdu: . . . . 14 . . Bibliography Riddall-Leech, S (2013) Home-based Childcare For childminders and nannies. Essex: Pearson Education Limited Information Commissioner’s Office (2012) Introduction to The Data Protection Act 1998. [Online] Available from: http://www. ico. org. uk/~/media/documents/library/Corporate/Research_and_reports/ico_presentation_EVOC_20120528. ashx [Accessed: 11th October 2013] Government Equalities Office (2013) Equalities Act 2010: Guidance. [Online] Available from: https://www. gov. uk/equality-act-2010-guidance [Accessed: 11th October 2013] Parliament UK (2010) The Role and Performance of Ofsted : Memorandum submitted by National Childminding Association. [Online]