Key Person Policy

The purpose of this policy is to ensure that each child and parent has a special relationship with a named member of staff, forming a bridge between home and nursery.

1. As much as possible, we allow children to choose their Key Person by watching who they best relate to when they start nursery or move rooms.
2. Each Key Person must understand and take seriously the importance of their relationship with their key children, in particular their wellbeing and emotional development.
3. Each Key Person must spend quality time or special time with each Key Child where possible. This can be in key child groups.
4. Each Key Person must communicate regularly with the parents and must make efforts to form a professional relationship, so that information, observations and concerns about the child can be comfortably shared to meet the needs of the child. We do not allow staff to be friends with parents on any social networking sites. See our Partnership with Parents Policy.
5. The Key Person is mindful of each child’s needs so that they are moved up to a new room when it suits each child. This may be before or after the relevant birthday or include time in small group rooms.
6. When a child starts at nursery or moves to a new room, parents are introduced to their child’s new Key Person and a “moment” is sent through iConnect with a photo of the Key Person with the child.
7. All staff must be sensitive to a child’s, and parents’ needs when they are settling into nursery, recognising that this can be a difficult time. When a Key Person has been selected, the Key Person must develop a special relationship with parents and child.
8. The Key Person will support parents/carers in helping to guide a child’s development at home through working together to share learning and development at nursery and at home and what a child is enjoying or focussed on at that time. Supporting learning at home might be through suggesting activities or support groups, loaning books or by listening to parents/carers concerns and sharing strategies and ideas.
9. The Key Person will liaise with the Nursery SENCO if they observe behaviour that might be signposting additional needs, and will discuss concerns with parents and carers and work with them to help understand a child’s needs and how we can support this.
10. Inputting observations into the online iConnect Learning Diary is the responsibility of each Key Person, with support from other staff. The Key Person will use the observations and other information they know about the child when supporting their learning and development.
11. While we recognise that having a Key Person can be of benefit to a child and their parents, we believe it is important that all members of staff get to know all children and parents. This aids a child’s transitions between rooms.
12. We recognise the paramount importance of developing strong Key Person relationships with babies and younger children. However, in the pre-school, we recognise the benefits of a team Key Person approach so that all staff can take part in the learning and development of all pre-school children.
13. Recognising the importance of the Key Person role and the attachments children will form, unless there are exceptional circumstances such as a very responsive member of staff or a particular attachment that has been formed, we will only allocate key children to a new member of staff when they are at least three months into their probationary period. After three months, a new member of staff will only become a Key Person once the nursery manger is confident they are familiar with the nursery’s approach to being a Key Person and are meeting the standards of care and teaching expected by Bristol Childcare.