Promote child and young person Development Essay

Children and young people need an environment which is most likely to promote effective and confident child development where they can experience and environment of mutual respect and trust and open communication. We as practitioners need to reflect on our own practice where we can evaluate the contribution we have made to the support of child development and find ways that we can improve our practice. When reflecting on our practice we need to look at the ways in which we communicate with the children and young people such as varying with different methods of communications through a range of activities referring the stages of their development. We do this in our setting by looking at the plans and linking the activity to the EYFS and looking closely to new vocabulary and proposed learning outcomes that we will focus on whilst doing the activity. Good practice would be to evaluate the activity after the week and then look back at what you did or didn’t do such as explain new shapes and positional language in a physical activity. In our setting we will always ask each other, as colleagues, to see if they would like to input anything and just for a little reassurance that you are doing something the correct way and beneficial for the children. Bad practice would be to not allow the children to be experimental with the activity and for the activity to be purely adult led, this would not allow the children’s development to grow and progress. We will try to avoid situations in which children receive adult attention only in return for undesirable behaviour. Children crave attention whether it is positive or negative. If we give them this they may not feel the need to behave badly. We make sure that bad behaviour is not taken away from the rest of the group and that no one is singled out for their attention. We set these clear behaviour boundaries and rules so that the setting is able to run effectively with all the team members working towards the same aim. The children will also feel more secure and confident if they know what is expected of them, what is or isn’t acceptable. Being positive role models will help the children look up to us for guidance and to also copy the behaviour they witness therefore it is of great importance that we promote good behaviour by being polite, friendly, kind etc. How we treat unacceptable behaviour Physical punishment such as smacking or shaking will be neither used nor threatened within our setting. This is highly inappropriate and of course illegal and it could also be extremely frightening for children. Children will never be sent out of the room on their own as this would be very upsetting for the child and potentially very dangerous as anything could happen to them. They must be accompanied with an adult at all times. Techniques intended to single out and humiliate individuals will not be used. This will also be very upsetting for the child and very humiliating for them, so we at Priory Pre-school have a ‘’thinking chair’’ in place. This is for the children to think about their bad behaviour. Once they have had time to think, we will talk to them and make them understand what they have done was not nice and could have potentially hurt another child. We will always let them express themselves and the teacher will always listen to the child to allow them to explain why they did the bad behaviour. This will allow the teacher to find out more information about the incident. If a serious behavioural incident would occur such as racial or abuse, the behaviour will be made clear immediately by explanations from the children and not by blaming anyone. It is very important to make sure that the behaviour they are doing is not welcome at the pre-school and not the child themselves. It is important to quickly move on from the bad behaviour once dealt with and then concentrate on the child’s good behaviour. Adults will not raise their voices in a threatening manner as this would be frightening to the child. Talking and explaining to a child will be much more beneficial. We make sure that cultural expectations are regarded in the pre-school and to make sure that their wishes are met as it would be inappropriate for us to go against th em. We remember that all of the children at our pre-school are different and will react differently to being told off for their misbehaviour. Re-occurring behaviour problems will be tackled by the whole pre-school and the child’s parents using objective observation records to try to understand the cause of the situation. It is important to record observations to gain a larger picture of why the behaviour is occurring and the records could show numerous reasons and could possibly show a pattern of behaviour. We will  always keep the child’s parents informed about how we are managing it and the progress of the child. It helps to let the parent know as the parent can continue the same practices as what we at the pre-school will use. A multi-agency approach is the best way of ensuring that all of the child or young person’s developmental needs are met. Using multi agencies, such as community centres, institutions and services is very important when working with childre n and young people as it is an effective way of supporting the children, young people and their families and parents and carers with additional needs and helps to secure an improved outcome. For example, in our setting we have an educational psychiatrist who comes in and visits every term to help go through the Individual Education Plan (IEP) for two children to review the current plan and set new targets to improve their learning, these are specifically for children with special educational needs (SENCO). By visiting these agencies and working closely with professionals like this, it can support the early intervention process for children and young people to prevent problems occurring in the first place, or resolve present problems which in term will reduce the amount of referrals being made. By working with agencies, it will allow practitioners to work in an inclusive way by looking closely at the need of every child and young person and making sure they are valued and supported to ensure active participation in all areas of the curriculum. In our local community we use a few local agencies such as Houghton Regis Community Centre and Downside Community Centre who allow parents to visit them for meetings for extra help on how to promote good child development and general care taking for their children.