Being parents ourselves, we understand how concerned a parent can become when leaving their children in someone else’s care. Many questions and thoughts that have gone through our own minds are:
- will they be kept safe and happy?
- please don’t feed my child junk food
- I miss my child
- I feel jealous
- will my child be left to cry?
- will they care for my child properly?There are lots of other concerns, but we think these are the most common. Our reply to parents concerns are, that we will care for children as if the children were our own. At Bright Stars we know every child is different. Our aim is to provide a warm and welcoming environment for each child, where they feel secure and where parents are content that their child is in safe hands while they are away from them.
We understand that each child will settle in at their own pace and for this reason we offer settling in sessions. All of our settling in sessions are free of charge and we ask that parents attend the first one. This gives us the chance to get to know each child individually (and also the parents) and offer the opportunity for us all to decide the best way for the child to settle into Bright Stars. At the second session parents will drop their child off for one hour and then the final settling in session is two hours. In rare cases we may feel a child would benefit from additional settling in sessions, if this is the case we will discuss a time that is best for you.An individual Settling in Book is created for each child when they join our setting. This contains photographs of our setting, our team members, groups we attend and photographs of the child and their friends having lots of fun at Bright Stars. This acts as a positive reinforcement and the child can look at this book when they are away from the setting and be reminded of the safe, enjoyable, happy times they have with their friends at Bright Stars
We also like to encourage parents to bring in photos of family, friends, home and pets to stick on ‘Our Friends and Family’ display board so the child can maintain that familiarity and also as an extra comfort for them. A child may also wish to bring along a blanket or other comfort item to help them settle.