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The role of the practitioner in meeting particular needs of babies is very important. I have chosen to do a group based care. The setting of care I have chosen to do is a Day Nursery.
A Day Nursery will offer a range of needs for babies from 3 months up until age 5 which will be Pre-school age. In a Day Nursery there will be a variety of care needs because they have to care for baby’s right up until the age of five so the care needs will be different depending on the age but I will be focusing on babies and the particular needs practitioners can offer babies.
One way in which practitioners can meet babies particular care needs is that it is vitally important that as a practitioner you are forming a relationship with the babies and their parents. This is important because you can work to together with the baby’s parents to help their baby develop and making sure they are developing at the right stage for their age. It will also be important to work with parents if a baby has a disability or maybe a learning difficulty that could affect the way they develop, for example in my baby placement one baby is partly blind in one eye so she needs extra help in order for her to develop in the right way, so the babies key worker worked together to find a way of helping the baby develop and to improve and strengthen the babies eye in order for her to be able to use that eye and develop to the best of her ability. It is also important that practitioners are forming good relationships with the babies making sure the babies trust you and they feel comfortable around you, to form this relationship you can comfort the baby when they are hurt of sad, making sure they are giving the babies attention by playing and interacting with them.
Another way practitioners can meet the particular needs of babies is by ensuring that practitioners are observing and recording children's development on a daily basis. Practitioners can do this by observing children to see what they enjoy doing and finding out what their likes and dislikes are. Practitioners will need to be recording this information while they are finding it out in order to make sure they have the information on record. Once practitioners have recorded this information they can this use it to plan to meet babies need's by ensuring they are providing the right activities and toys that the babies enjoy doing and that will contribute to their learning, this is so they will progress and improve their development to the best of their ability. It’s important for practitioners to record information because in order for you to go back to the information at anytime, it will also help with providing next steps for babies in order to further their development and then going back to this information after a certain amount of weeks to see if the baby has managed to carry out their next step.
Another really significant way of meeting babies particular needs is by always ensuring that babies are always be supervised in a childcare setting at all times. It is vital that in a setting they have a ratio system to ensure that there are enough staff to the amount of children in the setting each day. When it comes to babies the ratio has to be one adult to every three babies, so for example of there was twelve babies in on one day then there needs to be four members of staff in the room. If the room is split into two then it maybe a sensible idea would be to put six babies in one room with two members of staff and the other six babies in the other room again with the other two members of staff, this is so that there is more room for the babies to move around and so that it is easier for the staff to supervise the babies. This may also happen because each staff member will have a certain amount key children that they are responsible for, meaning that they have to do observations, change nappies and feed their key children, so is so babies care and learning needs are looked at more closely by one person and they will be responsible for ensuring that their key children are developing and learning as they grow up. If a key worker was on their own with three babies then they would need to carry out certain tasks in order to make sure that they will always be supervising the babies. The tasks they would need to carry out would be changing baby’s nappies on the floor on a changing mat instead of changing them on a nappy cubical, so is so that the key worker can watch the other babies while they are changing one baby’s nappy. It is important for key workers to make sure they are supervising babies this is so that can try and prevent babies from having accidents and to make sure that the babies are being kept safe.
Another way of meeting babies particular is by providing a variety of different resources and equipment in order to help the babies to develop and to reach their full potential. Key workers should be providing babies with toys and equipment that will stimulate them and keeping them interested. Toys like mobiles and things that are hanging will help to stimulate babies that are 3 months and younger when they are in a cot or under a play gym because they will try and reach their body up in order to try and grab the different toys. Sensory toys and materials are a good way of stimulating babies because they will be interested in how they feel, what they look like and younger babies will put things in the mouth in order to feel the texture of the material. Shape sorting toys will help babies really concentrate because they will be trying their very hardest to get the shapes into the holes and they may spend ages on the one toy until they can get the shapes in the holes. Puzzles are also another good way of stimulating babies because they will be turn each puzzle piece different ways to try and get them in the right place but they won't yet know which piece goes in which slot they will just try and put any piece in any slot to see if that puzzle piece matches, they do sometimes get it right. Building towers will also help to stimulate a baby and to help them concentrate because they will try to make a tower without it falling down, when I’m in my baby placement I will start off a tower for baby so that they can try and put the next brick on top. Babies will love to use walkers when they are in childcare settings, this is because the love to move around, they will like to bang into things and walkers will also encourage babies to walk and to use their legs, babies will also feel a sense of achievement when they are using a walker because they love it when they can get to the other side of the room. In my baby placement some of the babies have been using the walkers and they will spend a lot of time just going up and down the room.
Another way of meeting baby’s needs is by making sure babies have routines. It is important for babies to have a routine for many reasons. Routines will help stimulate babies and it will help them to keep interested because they are doing different tasks and activities throughout the day. It is really important to have routines in a Day nursery because some babies can be there from half seven in the morning to something like half six at night so they need to have routines in order to keep them occupied and to make sure they are having fun as well as developing at the same time. In a babies routine it is important to ensure that they have breakfast, a snack lunch and dinner to make sure they have got enough energy for the day and to ensure they are getting a balanced diet and a variety of nutrients. key workers will need to ensure they change the babies nappies at certain times of the day, it is also important that babies can a lot of time to play and explore their environment, the toys and the different resources. Routines will give babies stability and freedom to do what they want. Routines give babies a chance to be flexible. Routines will help babies to know what to expect in their daily routines for example, the babies in my placement will always know what it is time to eat. Routines will support baby’s development and they will be learning new aspects everyday.
To provide quality care for babies should be delivered with a caring and personal relationship between the baby and a practitioner. In a Day Nursery it is important that they have a key worker system to connect a practitioner with an individual baby, though a key person will have a group of babies to work with to meet their individual needs and to support them with their development to help them reach their full potential. The practitioner will also work with the baby’s parents to work together to make sure that the babies are developing at the right stage of development for their age. A key worker as a number of tasks to carry out in order to meet baby’s particular needs. Key workers should always be keeping daily records of their key baby’s development e.g. by writing a dairy about what the baby has done each day they are in the Day Nursery. In my baby placement the staff members have to write a dairy everyday about what the baby has been doing in their day. They would write whether the child ate all their meals in the day and how much they ate, how long they slept for, how many times they had their nappy changed and what they did, they also wrote down how many ounces they had of their bottle if they had one and then they would generally just write about what the baby did in the day and what they played with. This showed and helped their parents to understand how they are developing what they like to do. Key workers should observe the babies when they do something new and then make sure they feed this back to their parents. Key workers should be "observing your key children and analysing the information gathered through observation" (teaching expertise, 2009). Key workers should be planning a variety of different experiences for the babies which links to the observations you've done of the baby’s interests. If a baby has special needs it's important for practitioners to create individual education plans that will help support them. It is important that practitioners are keeping in contact with other professionals and other colleagues about the baby’s development.
