Early 2019, we launched our Striving to Exceed campaign to show all our families and staff that we are committed to continuous improvement in all our services. We carried out an internal evaluation of our services and have proceeded to make the following changes with more improvements to come throughout the year:
Cuddles Early Learning & Childcare
We wanted to focus our services on the importance of early childhood education throughout the ages of 0 – 12 years. We believe the name change accurately reflects that.
Nurturing Our Future
Our new slogan – Nurturing Our Future represents where Cuddles finds itself in the current environment. It can be interpreted in the following ways:
- Nurturing the future of individual children – helping each child to develop to their full potential
- Nurturing the future of Cuddles – we are always actively improving our service and learning from the past
- Nurturing the future of our world through children – improving the world we all live in
Reflective Practice Manager
We employed a reflective practice manager to oversee to increase the level of reflective practice in all Cuddles services and assist with improving each service to provide a safe environment and quality education to the children and families at Cuddles. The successful candidate for this role has begun her journey with us based in Carlisle. She has experience working within the Early Childhood Education and Community Services environment in both Sydney and Perth and has worked in different sectors such as government, not-for-profit and the private sector. She has spent the last two years in the Perth Northern Suburbs working with parents, local schools, childcare centres and the wider community. Part of it includes co-facilitating a range of community programs and advocating for children and families.With her knowledge and track record working in the early years, we believe she is a great addition to Cuddles and will be instrumental in increasing the quality of care to families in all our services.
Professional Development
Cuddles has committed to a year’s ongoing training for educators in leadership positions who will be able to mentor other educators. This training is a unique program created to enhance outcomes for children and their families in vulnerable circumstances and aims to strengthen practice and relationships between educators, children and families by focusing on their strengths, resources and aspirations.
Upgrading Works
We believe children need an environment that meets their needs in order to learn and grow as individuals. Contemporary theories and research informed by the Reggio Emilia approach recognise and value the environment as a ‘third teacher’. Behind educators and families, physical spaces hold the potential to influence what and how children learn. Hence, we have a continuous plan to improve each of our services starting with our oldest one in Carlisle.
Learning Program and Kindyhub
At Cuddles, every child has a tailor made learning program designed by our qualified educators. The learning program is constantly adapted and developed through close observation and interaction with the child. Parents have easy access to their child’s ‘Learning Journey’ profile through the Kindyhub app. It features the child’s daily activities and observations to show how your child is learning, how they are developing and what particular learning interests them.
Through Kindyhub, parents can:
- be involved in their child’s learning journey by submitting photos and videos of the latest happenings in their child’s life outside of Cuddles to the Room Leader.
- be informed on their child’s day a Cuddles – their learning, activities, meals, nappy changes/toileting, sleep times etc.
- view photos of their child in a secure and private space.
- communicate with the Room Leader directly.
- be informed on upcoming events.
Our Educators
We have long serving educators in our employment and low staff turnover rates. This helps us to create stable and secure environments for children to thrive. To ensure that our educators are continuously equipped to provide excellent care, we provide them professional development training sessions annually. We also ensure that if we do undertake students and trainees, they all have to meet the Cuddles standard set for early childhood educators in order to obtain certification through their education provider.
Zero Tolerance Drug Policy
Cuddles Childcare has a zero tolerance towards illegal substances in our centres. We actively drug test all of our staff members to ensure that our Centres remain a drug free environment. We value the safety of your children and are proactive in our zero tolerance towards illegal substances.
Good Hygiene Practices
- Our Centres are focused on stressing the importance of hygiene to all our children, encouraging hand washing before and after meal time, after blowing their nose, coughing or using the restrooms and after playing outside.
- We stress the importance of oral hygiene.
- Our Educators wear hair nets and gloves when serving food.
- Our Educators clean our Centres every night, however we also employ Professional Cleaners to thoroughly clean our Centres weekly.
- Our green bins are professionally cleaned monthly
- Our school vans are professionally cleaned monthly
- We have Pest control inspect and service our Centres every 3 months.
- Our fire equipment is serviced every 3 months
Specialised Staff Members
We have an in-house Maintenance Team ensuring that all centres are safe, secure and in top condition. We also have qualified dedicated Cooks for each of our centres preparing 5 meals a day.
Additional Services
To assist the busy parents of today, our centres operate for 12 hours, from 6:30am – 6:30pm. We have also extended our services to include Before & After School Care so that children graduating from our Zebra Room can still stay in touch with their friends despite attending different schools. It also gives parents a peace of mind knowing that they can leave their child in an out-of-school-care service that they are familiar and happy with.