Childcare experience - nursery

[Derbyshirelady]

We have been approved since September and had a few links since then but none have gone further than that. Our social worker has asked us to get more experience of childcare at a nursery, as that apparently went against us when up against other adopters (they had got this experience).

Would really like to hear others experiences of doing this - are nurseries keen for volunteers and how long did you go in for and how regularly?

Thanks

I would try rainbows , Cubs?

Even though we have 2 BC, both myself and DH had to undergo work experience in a local nursery. DH took 2 weeks leave from work and worked in a different nursery to me. We both volunteered to work for free.
We worked in the baby (under 2's) units as that was the age we wanted to be approved to adopt.

I wrote a friendly letter to local nurseries explaining our situation and asking them to help us on our journey. Two nurseries replied, others didn't.

We both found it to be a positive experience and received great feedback which we like to think helped our profile and in turn helped us to find our LO (has been home with us for a year now).

Good luck.

We tried 20+ nurseries with no luck (many had college students doing work placement, so couldn't have any more adults on a 'voluntary' basis). We ended up doing Beavers, and even though SW pulled a sucky face and said it wasn't the right age group, it ended up being absolutely the right age group.

Can I ask why you needed to get nursery experience? I am a year 4 teacher, hoping that will qualify as experience enough!

Deebyshirelady I had a lot of experience with kids but social worker felt dh needed a bit more. We adopted 2 years ago and started process around 20 months before that. We have a birth child, at the same time aged about 7.

Dh had had experience of working with kids and adults (mostly adults and kids of wrong age) with special needs and probablu far more relevantly experience of helping in church creche with under 5s.

In the end this proved enough, although dh did sort of offer to help at Brownies. Dd was at Brownies.

I feel part of this is:

A genuine need for you to know what it is like being around kids, especially not kids from within your wider family (e.g. even having a birth child/experience with my nephews - which I am sure we mentioned! was not considered enoug) because it was considered important for us to know children outside the family.This was our experience three and a half years ago.

Also feel IMHO that adoption services want to see you making an effort for this. Sorry if that sounds strange but I expect others will agree that sometimes adoption services do just want to see you trying!

Lastly, you may genuinely learn things of use.

Try local nurseries. They may be interested in your volunteering. This does depend on you being free to do it. My workplace have always been flexible allowing me short bits of time off to do different things, (eg courses) if I made up the time or took it as leave. Obviously a two week stint can just be holiday allowance.

If no nursery will have you (Don't be offended they may get lots of offers) try toddlers groups, pre schools and schools and consider church creches or other places that offer creches if you wish to.

I remember one woman started a lunchtime gardening club in a local schoool close to her work. Told is about it on mumsnet. This was in her lunch break.

Brilliant, using a skill for the school.

Just be up front about why you would like to do this what you can commit to - eg the initial period of time.

If a lunchti thing you could offer a term, once a week, and this may or may not carry on for a time.

Some schools look for people to come in and help or read. When we thought about places to try for Dh we thought about local to where we live but, as Dh works full time, this would have been hard. Nearer work might have worked.

Anyway...

Good luck.

Local councils will have volunteer schemes for the playgroups they run - there is a lot of paperwork but once you're through all that it's easy to get a placement..

This is all so helpful - thank you! Off to do research on local nurseries. We have got experience of older kids but are approved for age 0-5...

Thanks again

My friend DP was told he needed to get some experience and had real issues (like described upthread). He didn't manage to get any experience but they were still approved (it wasn't even bought up at the approval panel and their SW didn't seem to worry either).

They were also matched and now are parents to a very lovely DS.

Have you tried looking at the action for children website? They look for 'friends' for children in care, who visit them and take them out. Might be worth a look?

If you haven't already, you'll need to apply to be DBS checked. That can take a while..

Yes DBS checked since last summer. Approved to adopt in Sept 2015. Wish they'd asked us to get this experience during the approval process - seems to be an issue now we are being compared to others who have done it.

Thanks all.

If you are going to apply to be friends for children in care do make sure that they know why you want the experience. It sounds like you just want experience to 've able to adopt and might then stop befriending a child in care, which might not be very good for them. Just make sure whoever you volunteer for knows your reasons and understands this may be a very short term thing.