Policies

Statement of Purpose and Function

Our Mission Statement

At Little People’s Academy our mission is to take advantage of the teachable moments that happen every day by fostering the intellectual, creative, social, emotional, and physical growth and development of all our children who attend our service and to inspire a lifelong commitment to learning.

Our Aims and Objectives

At Little People’s Academy our aims and objectives are,

To provide a nurturing and stimulating environment where your child will grow and learn through age and stage appropriate activities through the mode of play.
To value parents and carers as the primary educators of their child and encourage their involvement in the service.
To embrace all children and value their race, language, gender, age, needs, culture and religion.
To provide a stable, safe, healthy, comfortable, and culturally relevant environment, which we believe is crucial to a child’s growth.
To help children reach their full potential by providing a stimulating and diverse curriculum of activities within a safe and secure environment.

Our Purpose and Function

Little People’s Academy is a non-discriminatory creche and early-years sessional preschool service which caters for children aged 1 years through to 6 years of age. Our goals are to offer quality early learning and care to young children and to offer parents information and support on early childhood care, development and education.

Little People’s Academy has always believed that each child should be treated as an individual and that each child has the opportunity to develop at his or her own pace.

Little People’s Academy’s fulltime creche caters for 59 children aged 1 years to 6 years of age with a minimum of 11 early learning and care practitioners and our preschool services each cater for 33 preschool aged children with 3 early learning and care practitioners, in line with the recommendations set down by the Child Care Act 1991 (Early Years Services) Regulations 2016 for this age group within a fulltime and sessional service.

Little People’s Academy (Hill Street Branch) is a fulltime creche service; which opens from 8am until 5pm, Monday to Friday, 51 weeks of the year; Little People’s Academy (Gardiner Street) Branch and Little People’s Academy (Bray Branch) are both sessional services; our sessional preschools operate for a maximum of 3 hours in the morning, between the hours of 9.00am – 12.30pm, and 3 hours in the afternoon, between 1.00pm to 4.30pm, Monday to Friday, for 38 weeks of the year, term time, between September and June.

Little People’s Academy takes part in the following government funded schemes.

The Early Childhood Care and Education Scheme (ECCE) offers 3 hours of free preschool per day for children who are eligible under the scheme’s terms and conditions.
The National Childcare Scheme (NCS) that provides financial support to help parents to meet the costs of childcare. The National Childcare Scheme provides 2 types of childcare subsidy for children over 6 months of age:

A universal subsidy for children under 3 years. Children over 3 who have not yet qualified for the ECCE are also eligible. It is not means-tested. The subsidy rates are based on the number of hours your child is attending childcare.
An income assessed subsidy for children up to 15 years which is means-tested.

Our Beliefs

Little People’s Academy believes that children learn through hands on active exploration and through interactions with peers and caring adults. Our care rooms are designed to foster and stimulate social, emotional, physical and intellectual growth. Our early-years program’s curriculum provides children with opportunities to participate in developmentally appropriate activities that encourage problem solving, hands-on learning and social growth and development.

Little People’s Academy recognises the importance of ‘play’ as an essential mode for learning and the role it has on the development of the child; therefore, we incorporate the Aistear Early Childhood Curriculum Framework and Síolta, The National Quality Standards, within our curriculum of activities.

Little People’s Academy uses Aistear, The Early Childhood Curriculum Framework, devised by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, (NCCA), to ensure that all content and developmental skills are addressed. The daily schedule provides children time for solitary as well as interactive play, time for whole group activities, and time for gross motor activities.

We believe that the role of our staff members, at Little People’s Academy, is to help each child grow and develop to his or her fullest potential. This goal is achieved through staff members approaching each child in a warm and nurturing manner as they respond to each child’s individual developmental needs. All our staff members are qualified and experienced individuals who play an integral part in our program development, maintaining and delivering high quality education to our children and being a strong support system for our families.

As a parent cooperative programme, we recognise the value and importance of parental participation as partners with the staff in educating their children. We have an open-door policy that allows parents to stop by at any time and additionally encourage volunteerism in the classroom when possible.

We believe in the importance of developing policies, procedures and statements relevant to the type of service we provide, to inform practice within our service. These policies are made available to our parents and staff.

Communication

Our services policies, statements and procedures are accessible and communicated to all, using a variety of media, e.g., handbooks, posters and pictures. They are communicated in a way that ensures that they are understood according to the levels of literacy and understanding of every child.

All parents/guardians are informed of the services Statement of Purpose and Function on enrolment. Staff members check with parents/guardians that they have read and understood the policy and provide any assistance needed.

A summary of this policy is included in the Parents’/Guardians’ Handbook. This policy will also be included in staff induction and annual staff training.

A copy of all policies will be available during all hours of operation to all staff and to parents/guardians in the Policy Folder located in the branch manager’s office.

Parents/guardians may receive a copy of the full policy at any time upon request. Parents/guardians and staff will receive written notification of any updates.

Further Information on the purpose and function of our service

If you require more details regarding our services purpose and function, or / and our services policies, you can contact our General Manager.

Signed: Tara Hutchinson Furey (GM) Date: 04th January 2022

(On behalf of the company Little People’s Academy)

This policy was ratified in May 2021 and updated in January 2022.

Planned Review Date: January 2023