Managing Child Daycare Analysis - Essay Example

?Managing Day Care Task Discuss these topics in detail Staff child Ratio Child care is a very important issue as it plays a vital role in molding the lives of the children involved and prepares them for life as they grow older. It is therefore mandatory that the staff that is employed to take good care of these children have easy time to facilitate their interaction with the children in the absence of their parents. Direct supervision, as well as indirect supervision should have the capability to protect and guarantee the safety and the health of the children and should also be appropriate for the different aged children for their intellectual development. Members of the staff should be in good numbers to balance the required ratio as they have many responsibilities to take care of such as attending to the children in groups or as individuals while also having to explore safety of each child and hence no specific member of the staff should be overloaded with responsibility. The recommended ratio in most countries is that one adult should be able to care for one child who is an infant as well as up to the age of one year. One adult should take care of five children that range around five years old at one specific time. For the children that are between the ages of 6-9 years, eight of them can be under one care taker at a specific time while those ranging from 10-12 years should not exceed ten under the care of one person at a specific time. It may however be challenging to meet this threshold as the number of personnel may fall short as compared to a large number of kids. (Farrell, 2001: pg 21) 2. Recruitment and Retention: A strategy should be developed to respond to all the issues that involve recruitment and retention of the people that take care of the children in day care. Such kind of strategy should be able to lay the basic foundation that would enable the child care to be in the hands of dedicate and highly qualified personnel that has the best interest of the children at heart. The recruitment programs should be able to bring out good qualities of the workforce that has the ability to provide continued support for the children under their care. The recruitment programs should also have the ability to facilitate retention of the up to date work force in their good numbers that is stable and dedicated to meeting the actual needs of the children under their care. The objectives that should be in the forefront for the stakeholders that recruit those who care for these children is that their strategy should be able to implement, after developing the actual strategy to be able to encourage many people who are willing but have a heavy heart to be able to come forward and take day care jobs as well as to implement the strategy to retain the good sense of personnel and workforce that have had all along and who proved their worth. (Fanning, 1991: pg 45) 3. Working with men in childcare: The issue about recruitment of men has been hotly debated for ages but then again men should have the chance to work as caretakers. This will enable the children grow up with no form of jobs stereotypes and they would be encouraged to embrace gender balance as compared to instances where only women could do this work. Although the percentages of men who are offering themselves for the job are still few, it isn’t as low as it used to be. The men should also undergo same levels of training so as to be able to come up for the job. There should also be public education on giving the male caretaker a chance to do their job without discrimination. (Lindon, 1998: pg 22) 4. The Importance of Policies: After choosing to be an official that works under child care programs, there are certain difficult decisions that we have to make. The decisions involve how to associate with the kinds of policies that are designed to bring sanity to the work of child care centers or programs. For example when there are operating hours that are seriously set by the managers or the parents, then there are factors that have to be considered such as the time that the parents require to travel to their work place and from those work places, the school hours within the day. You also have to consider your levels of commitment in the family level as well as the working hours of your spouse. Some of the instances whereby policies can be outlined is in a case whereby there is a parent handbook. This handbook has the outline of the kinds of responsibilities that you can be required to account for in your line of duty. The handbook talks about all the details including the policies on engagement with the parents, the workers payment, and the time for pick up among other important factors of policy and importance. (Elschenbroich, 1999: pg 28) Task 2 Write a more in-depth analysis for each of the following 1. Equality and diversity Whenever we want to be fair in our judgment, we must practice inclusion by all means so as to make everyone feel like they are active participants. In the child care program, we must embrace the policies that advocate for diversity and equality. This is a good way to implement acceptable procedures that would facilitate high level of quality of the whole practice. These kinds of policies give provision to the stakeholders to make them have the knowledge to ensure inclusivity and to discourage discrimination on whatever grounds that could possibly rise. The practitioners should be discouraged against the kinds of discrimination on both the children they care for as well as their fellow stakeholders. The kinds of discrimination that are discouraged by this policy include sexual orientation, race, marital status, religious beliefs, gender or even age. One of the major areas of discrimination and lack of equity as discussed is that of religion. A good care taker should be able to understand the religious beliefs of the child he is taking care of or of the parents of the child. Religion is vital in identity and many families thrive to maintain their faith and to respect their traditions and hence they may have to pass that to their children. It is therefore quite inappropriate for children to be forced to participate in activities that go against the teaching of their faith and at no circumstances should they be discriminated against for being members of a certain religion and not the other. (Brown, 1989: pg 89) 2. Multi-disciplinary Team work The idea of multi disciplinary teams when it comes to child care is embraced mostly by child welfare stakeholders that include up to casework practice or even child abuse investigations. The multi disciplinary aspect includes an array of professionals derived from various disciplines together with the family members working in unison in some sort of collaborative manner. Advocacy, as seen in these teams of discipline tend to explore the ways by which substitute care givers have the ability to advocate for the children through active participation in the interdisciplinary teams so as to address the potential obstacles that can diminish team functioning. (Connolly, 2002: pg 59) The teams should device rules that include laying out the roles of all the stakeholders involved, the way forward in terms of collaboration that should be expected between those involved. The service providers should fully implement all systems of disciplinary actions in acceptable criteria as well as to involve the full understanding of the mental health of the children. Issues that involve information sharing, location and models of understanding amongst other relevant information. Common team values should be developed while embracing diversity. The teams should work towards achieving social, legal and medical outcomes that rise from child neglect and abuse cases so as to understand what needs to be done. 3. Ofsted requirement The requirements that are detailed in the ofsted report basically tells parents as well as the care takers what kinds of quality in terms of provision of services are considered to be appropriate and hence it gives the parent an idea of what to expect and it also gives the care takers the idea of the kind of services they should offer and what is unacceptable. The kind of details that the report portrays is that of description of the responsibilities of the provider, the management as well as leadership needed for the understanding of requirements needed for an early stage in the foundation of child development. The provider of child care should be able to meet all possible kinds of needs of the children to assist them achieve progress in the best possible ways. The centers should be established in a way that can contribute to the emotional, mental and physical health of the children. The judgment should be appropriate and in case it doesn’t meet the requirements, actions should be taken by the inspectors and can possibly give notice on which areas to improve on. The stakeholders should therefore thrive to reach the standards or work on the corrected system as directed by the ofsted inspectors. It is necessary to work on these reports so that the child care center can remain registered as ignoring these issues may probably lead to deregistration. The parents should also have access to these reports to make them have an insight on the situations at the centers where they take there children and help them make decisions. (Bredekamp, 1995: pg 44) Bibliography Bredekamp, Sue & Rosegrant, Teresa (editors) 1995: Reaching Potentials: Transforming Early Childhood Curriculum and Assessment. Washington, NAEYC. Bisson, Julie. 1997: Celebrate! An Anti-Bias Guide to Enjoying Holidays in Early Childhood Programmes. Minnesota, Redleaf Press. 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London, Hodder & Stoughton. Mac Naughton, Glenda 2003: Shaping Early Childhood, Learners, Curriculum and Contexts. England: Open University. Mac Naughton, Glenda 2006 A Vison Shared: Pavee Point Forum, Key Note Speech: Dublin Murphy Kilbride, Kenise 1997: Include Me Too! Human Diversity in Early Childhood. Canada Harcourt Brace & Co. Murray, Colette 1997: Pavee Children. Dublin: Pavee Point Publications. Murray, C. & O’Doherty, A. 2001: ‘eist’ Respecting diversity in early childhood care, education and training. Dublin, Pavee Point Publications. Neugebaur, Bonnie (editor). 1992: Alike and Different, exploring our humanity with young children (revised edition). Washington D.C., NAEYC. NIPPA. 1995: Policy and Practice Guidelines for Early Years Practitioners: Valuing Play, Valuing Early Childhood. Belfast. NIPPA Pelo, Ann & Davidson, Fran. 2000: That’s Not Fair! Teachers Guide To Activism with Young Children. Minnesota, Redleaf Press. 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