Principle and statement of intent
This Code is intended as a guide to indicate the standards of conduct and accountability which are expected of all staff and volunteers of Bumbles Day Care.
Care
- Supervise the children at all times
- Be aware of the children’s safety and needs
- Ensure there are plenty of stimulating educational and fun activities
- Respond to the individual needs and demands of your clients to the best of your abilities
- Treat equipment and resources with care and respect: as if they were your own
- Be accountable and take responsibility for your actions
Quality
- Reflect on your own work; identify your strengths and weaknesses
- Build upon your strengths and improve upon your weaknesses
- Enhance Bumbles and the care given in any way you can.
- Provide constructive feedback and ideas to help improve Bumbles Day Care
- Seek to improve yourself and skills
Commitment
- Be prepared and willing to ‘go the extra mile’
- Be enthusiastic towards your job, parents, children and other team members
- Be reliable, with minimal absences and put yourself in the ‘shoes’ of others
- Promote Bumbles vision, purpose and values
- Ensure the highest quality of care to the children and safeguard their environment
Trust
- Act with honour and integrity. Be honest, truthful and open
- Uphold the trust placed in you by clients by respecting their individual requests and demands, and providing the highest standard of care
- Uphold the trust placed in you by fellow team members – look out for, and after them and do your fair share of work
Teamwork
- Be mindful and proactive in observing and protecting the safety of your colleagues and those in your care.
- Support fellow team members – ensure no one person is doing all the work and help other team members if they require it.
- Be friendly and considerate – remember each individual is unique
- Work together to ensure the best possible outcome of those in your care
- Communicate with parents and carers
General Guidelines
Appearance
Staff are expected to maintain a neat and tidy appearance while at work. This means that:
- Long hair must be tied back off the face
- Heavy make-up is not considered appropriate
- Staff must not wear false nails or nail polish
- Staff must keep jewellery to a minimum and only a single band if involved in food preparation
- Appropriate working clothes are navy jogging / tracksuit bottoms / leggings and standard uniform issue tunics, polo shirts and sweat shirts. Wearing jeans is not permitted.
- Staff involved in food preparation must wear a hat and apron
General Hygiene
In addition to the Health and Hygiene routines laid down in the Bumbles Handbook of polices and procedures, with which staff should familiarise themselves, please note the following:
- Products for children’s personal hygiene use, (wipes, Vaseline, sudocream, anbesol, dentinox etc), provided by parents, should not be used by staff.
- Staff should particularly remember to wash their hands after using the toilet and also before serving food to children.
- When wiping a child’s nose, a paper tissue should be used only once and disposed of immediately in a bin and hands washed.
Discipline / Child Management
Pervading every aspect of child management techniques at Bumbles, is the principle that it is the actions / words of the child which are judged and not the child him/herself. This means that:
- Staff do not say “you are a bad/stupid/bold/nasty/silly” etc boy/girl but rather; “what you have done was dangerous/wasn’t friendly/wasn’t helpful” etc or “you have hurt / you have made a mess … I don’t like what you did” etc
Staff should make sure that they are familiar with the accepted procedures for behaviour management as outlined in Bumbles Policy, Managing Children’s Behaviour
Language
Care should be taken by staff when speaking to children and one another, that our choice of language is appropriate, as through our actions and words, adults can provide either positive or negative role models for children. Examples of inappropriate language include:
- Any use of swear words
- Describing children in a negative manner e.g. ‘brats’ or ‘brutes’
- Using slang e.g. ‘bum’ instead of ‘bottom’
- Asking children to ‘shut up’ instead of ‘quiet please’
- Using the word stupid
- Ordering children around instead of remembering to include please and thank you in requests made to them
- Using nick names which are unacceptable to the child or his/her parents
Should children use any inappropriate language, staff should challenge their choice of words and offer an acceptable alternative.
Staff should also be mindful of the tone of voice used: i.e. it is generally better to use a gentle but firm tone of voice as opposed to an angry or sharp tone.
Generally, staff should consider the suitability of their topics of conversation while in direct contact with children, bearing in mind the fact that adult conversations will be overheard. The subject matter of conversations should be child-centred rather than adult orientated. Sometimes discussion of social activities is better left fort the staff room.
Use of Telephone
Generally, incoming and outgoing calls of a personal nature should be kept to a minimum and be received and made during an employee’s lunchtime. Mobile phones must be switched off during the day, and kept in lockers provided unless otherwise negotiated with management. Staff are permitted to use their mobile phones on their lunch breaks i.e. in the staff room, away from the children.