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Letting Parents In!


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Hi

Can anyone guide me into the right direction if anyone knows of a discussion about access into the building for parents please - if there has been a discussion. Tried a search but not coming up with what I want.

 

Need some ideas of how to let parents into our setting. We are in a large 3 floor building with the top floor being the office and staff room, resource room. At the moment we have a keypad on the front door that the parents know the code of and which is changed regularly.

 

Powers to be not happy with this, so need some ideas rather than having someone sitting in the hall - way all day opening and shutting the door!

 

We have a bell on the door for visitors but how unmanageable would this be if we have to answer it 79 times a day at least for the parents.

 

Major headache!

 

Appreciate your thoughts.

 

Gemini :o

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a key pad used by parents sounds pretty reasonable to me - does that get them straight into the nursery itself or a hallway / cloakroom? It would take up most of somebody's day answering the bell every time it rings!!

What reasons have been given for changing your current system?

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Not secure enough, anyone could pass on the code to the keypad.

Can't employ someone to purely answer the door and if it fell to the ground floor staff then that could result in problems in their room.

 

Another issue is how do we know who is in the building. Need to have a visitors book but where is that put? No room in the hall way. The office is on the top floor. Is this managed again by the ground floor staff? Staff and children all have an in and out board to move their card into, and children's registers are done, but no times of when they come in or go out of the building. Do we get parents to sign their children in and out of the building or do staff members do it, and hope they remember whilst doing the 300 other jobs they are supposed to be remembering?!?

 

Bad day think I need to go to bed!

 

 

Gem

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This is something that surprised me when I helped out at my friends DD. Parents were coming and going at all times, nobody knew who was in the building at a given time even though there was a signing in/out book because they werent there long enough in most cases to bother filling it in. I dont suppose there is a simple way of ensuring you know who is on.off the premises but it was definitly different to a playgroup in a church hall.

No solution I'm afraid. :o

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How about a CCTV camera on the door so that the person at the door can be seen in the office, parents buzz for entry, you check you know them, then you press a button and the door opens. The office can then record entry in times- don't know how to monitor people exiting, and they would have to make sure they shut the door on exit. Do they shut the door ok now on exit?

Don't know where you get these systems from but I have seen it at a DN and our dentist uses a buzzer system but not with a camera.

 

Peggy

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Hi

Can anyone guide me into the right direction if anyone knows of a discussion about access into the building for parents please - if there has been a discussion.  Tried a search but not coming up with what I want.

 

Need some ideas of how to let parents into our setting.  We are in a large 3 floor building with the top floor being the office and staff room, resource room.  At the moment we have a keypad on the front door that the parents know the code of and which is changed regularly.

 

Powers to be not happy with this, so need some ideas rather than having someone sitting in the hall -  way all day opening and shutting the door!

 

We have a bell on the door for visitors but how unmanageable would this be if we have to answer it 79 times a day at least for the parents.

 

Major headache!

 

Appreciate your thoughts.

 

Hi,

  Are you in a school or a nursery?  Private or state?  Before I qualifed as a teacher I worked as a nursery nurse at Leapfrog Day Nurseries and they used to have two doors.  The parents had a key fob for the main outside door and then they pressed a button once inside, to let a certain room know that they had arrived to collect a child.  The staff from that room, then used to let them into the main part of the building.  Visitors had to press a bell at the outside entrance to gain attention of staff so they could enter the building.

This was a fantastic, safe system but obviously very expensive to start with.  It depends on your budget etc.

 

This is the only good example that I know of.  Sorry!

 

Boogie

:D

 

Gemini  :o

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i like the sound of that one Maz  :D

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You could extend it to members of the church, too: very effective in reducing Supervisor's stress levels!

 

Maz

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Thanks for all help so far. We are a private day nursery. Parents are good at shutting the door behind them, thank heavens. It doesn't seem as though there will be any easy solution to this but do appreciate your replys as I'm sure someone is operating a system that will work for us and one we haven't thought about!

 

Gem

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  • 4 months later...

Hi

We still haven't solved our problem of parents entering and leaving the building. We don't have a problem but inspection team do. One inspector came to visit today, a parent held the door open for them as they were going out and the inspector managed to get up to the office without anyone stopping her. All staff know her so of course presumed someone along the line had let her in - not a well meaning parent!

Quite easy to disable the keypad and parents to ring and staff to open the door but what do we do about the 79+ parents leaving? We can't rely on parents not to not let others in.

 

Ideas of holding the parents in the entrance hall and bringing the children to them goes against everything we are building with parents in terms of communication. Our parents like seeing their children at play, staff have good relationships with parents and it lets them see all the good work that is going on.

 

Really causing us a headache. Just can't afford to employ a door person! Is there a solution out there at all?

Please help.

Gem

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could you use the bell idea where there is a door bell for each room so that only the staff from the particular room have to attend to the door rather than the ground floor staff?

 

I remember our inspection a few years ago the only thing the inspector could find to moan about was the door bell or in our case the lack of one we bought a cordless bell from B&Q (these might be a quick way to install several bells as long as they are each on different frequencies)

 

Its nice to have open house policy with parents and Ofsted do like to see it in settings. I dont think ofsted want you to keep your parents out just everyone else and it does raise child protection questions when an inspector can walk all the way through the building. your parents need to be made aware of the consequenses of letting others through the main door.

 

on the subject of visitors could you put a sign-in sheet on a clip board and hang it on the wall in the entrance hall all our parents sign their children in and out as they enter .

 

do you know when to expect parents back or do they just turn up I cannt quite understand why you have so much comming and going?

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