Deciding on childcare
Every child develops at his or her own pace but when you’re choosing childcare your first consideration needs to be your child’s age and stage of development. When choosing childcare make sure that it meets your child’s:
- S – Social needs: relationships and friendships
- P – Physical needs: space to run, play and experiment
- I – Intellectual needs: range of books and toys
- C – Creative needs: activities to experience and learn from
- E – Emotional needs: your child needs to feel safe, secure and happy
Babies need to build close relationships with a group of adults that they know and trust so they can learn to communicate. They are also learning to explore their surroundings so care needs to be taken with their food, hygiene and sleeping arrangements.
If you choose a nursery, look for an effective key worker system that will mean your baby has one main carer for most of each day. Ask how many other children will share the carer’s attention. Make sure the atmosphere is calm so that the baby isn’t confused or overstimulated and check that there’s a safe, quiet place where your baby can sleep with hygienic nappy-changing arrangements. Look for a carer who has experience or training in looking after babies and make sure staff have time to cuddle a bottle-feeding baby. If you want to maintain breastfeeding you will need the carer’s support. Make sure the surroundings will allow your baby to explore safely as s/he learns to crawl and walk.
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