FAGLEY PRIMARY SCHOOL AND CHILDREN CENTRE
KEYWORKER POLICY
Principal: Children learn to be independent from a base of secure relationships with
parents and/or a key worker.
A
Key Worker is:
A named member of staff who has more contact than others with the child
Someone to build relationship with the child and parents
Someone who helps the child become familiar with the environment
Someone who meets childrens individual needs and care needs
Someone who responds sensitively to childrens feelings, ideas and behaviour
The person who acts as a point of contact with parents
Why have a key worker?
Can you remember or imagine what it is like to be at a party or an important meeting
where you dont know anyone, or travelling alone in unfamiliar city, how comforting and
reassuring it is if the party host, chair of the meeting or travel guide, introduces you to
people you can join with, explains what the agenda is or shows you where the important
places are. It is helpful to us all, when in a strange situation, to have someone we can
rely on to interpret unfamiliar experiences for us until we feel confident to manage the
situation on our own. Even then, if we feel unwell, unsure or overwhelmed, knowing that
there is someone there whom we can ask for help if necessary, is reassuring and can
enable us to tackle something on our own that we might otherwise avoid.
This is what key workers do for their allocated group of children. Children need to know
that someone in particular keeps them in mind while they are away from their parents.
When they have someone who gets to know them well and supports them with interacting
with others, their confidence and well-being is supported.
What does having a key worker mean for children?
As adults, we value the people we are close to in our lives because they understand us
well, accept our good and bad sides and give us their time and attention when we need it.
Children also need familiar and trusting relationships in order for them to develop
emotional well-being.
The people we feel close to are the people we may feel most anxious about losing. They
are also the people with whom we can express our feelings. Therefore children may
show their need to feel secure through clinging to their parents or key worker and being
uncooperative with people they do not know well. They may protest when their parent or
key worker leaves them and show their distress by rejecting comfort or distraction,
becoming aggressive or defiant or withdrawing and not engaging in activities. Though
difficult to manage, these are ordinary ways in which children respond to separation and
anxiety. In these situations, children benefit from having a key worker who can accept
their emotions and respond with understanding.
This does not mean condoning negative or anti-social behaviours but by acknowledging
the feelings that may underlie such behaviours such as anger, anxiety, distress or
jealousy gives children the message that we empathise with their difficulties even when
we do not approve of their method of expressing them. Providing vocabulary for
feelings will support children to become aware of their emotions (feelings chart).
By adopting a key person approach that emphasises the centrality of loving and secure
relationships to their practice, practitioners are supporting children to feel good about
themselves and be confident. When children feel like this, they are more likely to be
able to engage in more complex and creative play, freely access a broad curriculum and
take risks in their learning through guessing, experimenting and making mistakes.
Being tuned in
The key to effective practice is knowing the children in your group really well. This
enables you to start with what the children already know and are interested in rather
than what you think they should be taught. Deep knowledge and understanding of
individual children comes from spending time with your key children at play, good
information sharing with parents and close and regular observations. Therefore
effective implementation of the Key Worker Approach includes observing your key
children regularly and analysing the information to both increase your understanding of
the children and also to provide evidence for the records of your key childrens
developmental progress. Learning what your key childrens conversations, play and
behaviour means will enable you to better understand the connections they are making in
their learning and to engage in sustained shored thinking.
Being available and responsive
Children understand much by observing our body language and facial expressions and will
interpret these according to their previous experience, sometimes in ways that we do
not intend. Therefore it is important that we make it clear to children that we are
available to support them through what we do as well as what we say.
2
By sitting at the childrens level and being involved in their learning and play, you will
show that you are available to them to come to as they need and, especially for new
children, by drawing their attention to interesting things around them and smiling and
nodding as they explore you will support their explorations and independence, thereby
providing a secure base. It is often tempting to move away from an activity once
children are settled but for new children or children who find peer interactions
challenging, this can be very disruptive so practitioners need to be sensitive to when
their presence and involvement in learning and play is necessary.
Being consistent
In classes, where there are three or more members of staff working as a close team,
there are good opportunities for children to experience consistent interactions and
expectations. This kind of experience is important for children moving between the
worlds of home and school where the environment and routine is very different.
All children benefit from the emotional security that familiarity of people, places and
experience brings. This can often be overlooked in the organisation of play and
lunchtime sessions, when suddenly children are expected to engage in very different
routine activities with a different group of staff. Such changes in familiarity and
routine can raise the stress levels of all children, though most will be able to use their
existing emotional and social skills to adapt quickly to new situations. For some children
such as those with additional emotions, social or learning needs, or who are newly arrived
in the community learning English as an additional language, the stress caused by
frequent changes of practitioner (such as playtime, lunchtime, PE), may result in either
distress or negative behaviour. Thought needs to be given to the organisation of these
times to that children are given time to become gradually familiar with all the relevant
practitioners, the routines and the environment over an extended period of time.
Liaising with parents
To support childrens sense of well-being and belonging, practitioners need to develop
close working partnerships with parents in which there is mutual respect and trust. By
learning about and understanding each familys customs, the practitioner can extend
their knowledge of the individual child to provide effective care and learning
opportunities. This means sharing information about childrens:
Emotional needs, for example, any fears or worries the child has
Physical needs
Language and cultural heritage: can the practitioner use important words in each
childs home language and are they knowledgeable about significant events in the
childs cultural and religious life?
It is important to spend time with your key childrens parents regularly, sharing
observations and information and gathering ideas for future plans.
Settling in
Starting a new class can be stressful for children. They are in a strange and perhaps
overwhelming environment, meeting several new children and adults, encountering
unfamiliarly equipment and experiences, and then the person they rely on most leaves
them. Settling new children into a setting successfully, with minimum distress is
probably one of the most skilful and challenging things a practitioner does. It can be a
fraught time for parents and children. For practitioners too, memories of their own
separations and losses in life make this an emotionally charged time. For all these
reasons, it can be tempting to cut short or even dispense with settling in times.
An effective settling in system gives parents, children and practitioners sufficient time
to get to know each other well. An agreed settling in policy might include:
Guidance for parents on ways to help children at times of change
Overview of the terms expectations
Dilemmas
The key worker approach is not simple to implement. Sometimes dilemmas arise. As
with all good practice, the best way to address these dilemmas is through observation
and discussion, and making a professional judgement.
In order to be able to respond sensitively to childrens feelings, practitioners need to be
sufficiently open emotionally to be able to understand those feelings and yet also retain
their own sense of adultness in order to hold the childs distress. Sometimes adults can
find themselves responding to childrens demands in kind.
Some examples of this are:
Feeling overwhelmed by the crying of unsettled children who themselves are
overwhelmed by being in school.
Getting impatient when children become frustrated
These are times when it is useful to take a step back and talk with colleagues about what
is going on for the child, and think about how the adults can provide, help, and set
appropriate limits if necessary.
Practitioners need to understand that in order to be healthily independent; a child needs
to be able to express dependency at vulnerable times.
This is an emotionally demanding and skilful area of practice that some practitioners
find overwhelming and so avoid becoming close to children. Yet those that are able to be
available, sensitive and responsive to their key children can take pride in knowing that
not only are they contributing positively to the quality of their key childs mental model
of relationships for the future, they are also assisting healthy brain development and
learning abilities.
Research indicates that an effective key person approach leads to:
Better satisfied and engaged staff
Improved care and learning for children
Parents who feel confident about the quality and devotion of professional staff.
Drafted
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