In this article, we review our procedures for managing guests and visitors to the setting for the purposes of safeguarding our children. It should be read in conjunction with other health and safety policies regarding access controls
Supervision of Visitors
At Hatching Dragons we aim to protect the children in our care at all times. This includes making sure any visitors to the nursery are properly identified and supervised.
Identification and permission of access
Should the nursery benefit from (video) intercoms, staff should only permit entry to families who are known to the staff teams. Should you not recognise the individual, please speak to the manager, room leader or supervising authority to confirm their identity. Do not let in someone you do not recognise - if you do you might be subject to disciplinary action. Managers have a responsibility to ensure that video intercoms are both set up, working and transmissible to the floor teams via accessible apps so that they can see who is attending - only upon visual recognition do / will staff grant entry.
Where applicable, visitors’ identity should be checked, e.g. Ofsted inspectors or colleagues attending in a professional capacity such as speech and language therapists. Visitors are informed of any relevant policies including the fire evacuation procedure and mobile phone, camera and other recording devices policy including use of smartwatches where applicable.
The use of third parties and passwords
Some parents offer us passwords for third parties to collect their children - these can be found on the child’s EY Log profile but parents should always notify the school and the manager the school teams via slack, any third party (nanny or otherwise) with a photo, name of the collecting person and a passcode for the key worker teams to use.
Signing In
All visitors must sign the visitors’ book on arrival and departure - parents who are attending the school for collections are the only exception. Those who are coming to the school for an extended period of time (e.g. show arounds / inspections / contractors / works etc) need to sign in.
Visitors need to be signed in via the visitor logs that have been set up in the Visitor Management Folder located within the Health & Safety folder on the School's Team drives - these are google forms that need to be opened up in the tablet and provided to parents upon arrival for them to complete prior to be shown around.
Staff should not permit access to any individual on voice recognition alone - passwords are required upon induction into the school and can be stored on both EY Man and EY Log profiles for the staff team to use should video intercom not be available. Full name and passwords should be provided for any parent / carer attending for collection
Should video intercoms be available, staff should only grant access after reviewing who is in attendance via the Ring app on their tablets - managers are responsible for ensuring that all staff and room leaders have access to the device list and CCTV upon induction
All visitors are given and should wear a visitor’s badge to identify themselves to staff and parents within the nursery. A member of staff must accompany visitors in the nursery at all times while in the building; at no time should a visitor be left alone with a child unless under specific circumstances arranged previously with the manager.
Security
- Staff must check the identity of any visitors they do not recognise before allowing them into the main nursery. Visitors to the nursery must be recorded in the Visitors’ Book and accompanied by a member of staff at all times while in the building
- All external doors must be kept locked at all times and external gates closed. All internal doors and gates must be kept closed to ensure children are not able to wander
- Parents, visitors and students are reminded not to hold doors open or allow entry to any person, whether they know this person or not. Staff within the nursery should be the only people allowing external visitors and parents entry to the nursery
- The nursery will under no circumstances tolerate any form of harassment from third parties, including visitors, towards others, including children, staff members and parents. The police may be called in these circumstances.