The purpose of the 2 year check appears to be twofold -
1. To share children’s abilities and successes with their parents
2. To spot problems in children’s learning and development early enough for intervention to be put in place to support the child.
However, there are going to be some challenging issues that all childminders will need to resolve…
• We need to find out when the child’s 2 year check is going to be so we can prepare the document ready for the Health Visitor - this means asking the parents and hoping they remember to tell us or liaising with Health Visitors
• We need to plan time in our already busy schedules to write the progress check
• We need to be up-to-date with our observations, assessments and individual next steps planning for the child so we can put the latest information in the progress check
• The guidance to the 2 year progress check tells us that we must include information about when the child is progressing well and areas where they might be struggling - and I cannot see negative comments impressing parents or making it likely they will show the check to the Health Visitor!
• We do not know at what point during the year we will be writing the 2 year progress check - and, as we know, children’s learning and development can change within a few days or weeks, never mind months. This means the information written for one month might show a concern whereas if we had waited a few weeks we would be able to note the child would be progressing normally.
• The Development Matters guidance document makes it very clear on virtually every page that is not supposed to be used as a check list - so how do we know what we are supposed to be writing?... or what Health Visitors are looking for when they do their checks?
• Parents, I have found over many years of caring for children, are prone to exaggerating their child’s abilities and successes. So how will you tackle it if a parent says a child can do something and you have never seen them even close to achieving it in your provision?
• We have to work closely with parents to write the 2 year progress check. What if you have hard to reach parents who are too busy to get involved? How will you engage them in the process?
• Health Visitors have to make time to read the progress checks we produce. For those childminders who are quite wordy and like to include lots of information, you might find your efforts wasted. You will need clear documentation that supports you with writing a short informative 2 year progress check document which is easily accessible and useful.
• As far as I am aware, once the 2 year progress check is written we do not get any feedback from the Health Visitor and we cannot approach the Health Visitor direct without permission from children’s parents. So we need to reflect on what we might do next to support the child once the check is written.
To prepare yourself for writing the 2 year progress check you will need…
• Procedures in place to prepare and write the check
• An understanding of the types of things that need to be written
• A detailed knowledge of child development at age 2 - 3
• A close working relationship with parents to ask their views
• An awareness of how parents will react to what you might have to write about their child - and ways to support them
• Pre-prepared paperwork for writing the check.
To help you with this, I have written a mini e-book 78 ‘Guidance for the 2 year progress check’.
All mini e-books cost £1.99 and are available by following the PayPal link on my Knutsford Childminding website. You will then need to tell me, in the PayPal notes section, which mini e-book you would like to buy!
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