Need to gain childcare experience at a nursery

[quietlyfurious]

Hi everyone,

We recently started our stage 2 PAR. We believe our application to adopt should be pretty strong but have been told our principal weakness is a lack of childcare experience as we have quite a lot of friends who have chosen not to have kids, and all those that have moved out of London so we haven't had babysitting opportunities for them even though we've seen them. We don't have any local friends with the correct aged kids (2-3ish) and have been told we're expected to gain experience at local nurseries.

I (40s, male) have minimal childcare experience, but my partner (40s female) is a consultant paediatrician and deals with kids all day every day. We're both professionals, nice (IMHO!) people, own a home in the area and are already fully DBS checkedas part of the adoption process. I can't imagine nurseries will be very keen to have us nonetheless as at least I would have to be shown the basics. Has anyone got any tips on how to approach nurseries and present ourselves in a way that they may be willing to allow us to volunteer? I'm aware that I've really only got one chance to approach each nursery and we really want to gain the experience we're lacking. I had considered doing a little CV for us both with photos and brief biographies, but I don't know if that will come across as a bit weird.

I can play the piano to a decent standard and could offer to do music sessions in exchange for childcare experience, but I'm not even sure if nurseries do that kind of thing.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated as we have zero experience dealing with nurseries because we don't have any kids (yet)!

This is totally ridiculous of your agency, can you get them to articulate exactly what they think you'll magically learn about parenting by playing piano in a nursery?!

Totally bonkers. Push back, or change agencies. This isn't fair on you, or the nurseries.

We're seeing more and more posts on here where agencies are asking for childcare experience. Before Covid, it would have been hard, now it's frankly impossible. I can't imagine any childcare setting letting someone into their bubble for this reason.

Jellycatspyjamas wrote a very good response to a post on this which you should be able to find if you search.

It sounds like your agency is at least progressing you through stages. Some have been told they can't start stage one till they have x amount of hours experience. That's just a complete delay tactic.

I agree with Percy. Question the agency on what exactly it is that they think is your childcare weakness. Ask for specifics.

This sounds nuts!! However, if the agency are adamant and will accept you helping me with my two year old and twin one year olds, I'd be over the moon. We live in Winchester. Really not joking!

I'm ignoring Covid for the purposes of this post.
My experience is also 15 years old now.

I volunteered in a pre-school (2.9-5) & an associated after school club (primary) whilst going through approval and then until matching, so around 2-2.5 years. I did a morning a week at the pre-school and an after school a week at the ASC.
It was extremely beneficial to me in terms of my confidence dealing with random children of a variety of abilities. I also helped me have lots of ideas of activities for my DC when they arrived.
I wasn't allowed to do any 'intimate care' or be alone with them.

I would try for a place at a pre-school run by a parents committee rather than a private nursery or school based. The kind of place that usually asks for parents to come in and help prepare snacks etc. If you could commit to once a week for a term you could become a useful extra pair of hands. Is your DBS already done, as that will help?

Because I was open with staff & parents as to why I was there people were really friendly and helpful.

If instead you can take a whole week off you could try seeing if there is a holiday playscheme you could volunteer at. The children might be primary age rather than preschool but it may be better than nothing, and showing willing.

I volunteered at a nursery for one morning a week for six months. I emailed them, explained I wanted childcare experience as part of the adoption process and they jumped at the chance at having an extra pair of DBS checked hands. They were brilliant and I learned a lot. I don’t think playing the piano to children will help much. Sitting on the carpet and chatting to a child who has learned to trust you enough to share why they bit someone else will ramp up your childcare skills... as well as learning to play again!

I imagine it will be difficult with COVID but perhaps if you agree to lateral flow tests etc they’ll be willing.

Silly thing I learned

• how to refer to a child if you don't know their name (useful for friends of your DC)
• what to say when you have a splodgy painting put in front of you and you have no idea of what it is
• distraction techniques
• range of skills a child of a certain age has
• when to 'help' and when to leave them to it
• a whole bunch of songs (Alice the Camel, Dingle Dangle Scarecrow...)
• how important it really is to name everything
• activities for different skills (fine & gross motor, science, maths, understanding the world etc)

I also learned I'm pretty rubbish at imaginative play, and would much rather do lego.

That does all sound really useful! I guess all those soft skills I wouldn't think of, having looked after children my whole life. I take back what I said. I still think that a paediatrician probably has those skills, though? And that most parents just learn them "on the job".

We couldn't afford to learn 'on the job' from scratch.

One of ours was nearly 8 when placed - she knew what poor parenting looked like. It was important that I showed from the start that I was competent to look after both her and her younger sister.

I can understand that. I can see situations like yours where this is helpful.

It also appears to increasingly be an unreasonable delaying tactic by social workers, though, and is especially difficult at the moment.

My husband worked with children as part of his role for 15+ years, even taking groups of 10-20 abroad for football tournaments, but one LA told him to get more childcare experience?! We didn't go with them.
In the end it was just me who needed some experience, and I looked after my friends 5 year old a couple of times, and also volunteered at my local school one morning a week for 6 weeks. The kids there were 5/6 yrs old, we wanted to adopt 0-2 yrs old..... But I did it as I was told to.
The experience wasn't even put in our PAR, which was annoying, but also wasn't even relevant as the age of the kids was a lot older than we wanted to adopt, and the agency didn't even ask the school for a reference!

@mahrezzy

I volunteered at a nursery for one morning a week for six months. I emailed them, explained I wanted childcare experience as part of the adoption process and they jumped at the chance at having an extra pair of DBS checked hands. They were brilliant and I learned a lot. I don’t think playing the piano to children will help much. Sitting on the carpet and chatting to a child who has learned to trust you enough to share why they bit someone else will ramp up your childcare skills... as well as learning to play again!

I imagine it will be difficult with COVID but perhaps if you agree to lateral flow tests etc they’ll be willing.

Thanks, I wasn't suggesting playing the piano would give me childcare experience, I was just thinking that it might be something appealing I could offer to the nursery to make it worth their while.

I wonder whether it is partly some kind of test by SWs.

Are you willing to put yourself out a bit? Are you resourceful enough? Can you find the time if you absolutely need to?

After all, once placed you don't know how much fighting for you child you will have to do, or time off for appointments re development or whatever.

I agree with what UnderTheNameOfSanders says, I wondered if they were testing me to see if I would make the effort/find the time to do it. The fact it wasn't even used was a bit surprising, and they didn't even check with the school I was doing it!

I would see if you can volunteer at a local school, as young as possible in the age you're looking to adopt, but to just show you are willing. The school will be happy to have you, do your DBS and do what they can.

Jellycatspyjamas wrote a very good response to a post on this which you should be able to find if you search.

Why thank you, I'l try to summarise here.

I'll say up front I'm not a supporter of asking potential adopters to get random childcare experiece, in most cases it achieves very little other than another box being ticked. If there are some essential skills they feel you need as a potential adopter they should be covering that in training, not expecting child care providers to fill their gaps. I also object to other children being expected to act as guinea pigs for people to test out their child friendlyness on. Different if people would be volunteering otherwise (and many do) but purely to tick a box in a process is inappropriate in my view.

Given this, I'd go back to your social worker and ask specifically what she needs to see from you that you can only get by volunteering with children, what particular skills or qualities does she feel the need to evidence. If it's about providing care to children, for example, you're not likely to get that as a volunteer an afternoon a week in a nursery setting, because the people who do this are trained, qualified professionals and they will do the childcare elements, leaving volunteers to support play with kids. If it's time around unfamiliar children, your partner has this in spades. If she can't tell you exactly what you need to gain, I'd refuse to do it.

If there are things she thinks you would gain that you can't gain any other way, and don't have experience of, I'd look for a setting that can give you the particular experience she is looking for - which may be pretty tricky. Again covid will have something to contribute in that I know none of the schools here are accepting volunteers into the school in any capacity to reduce infection risk.

If you have time, and can be bothered, you might want to just jump through the hoop but I'd be inclined to push back a bit first (but that's very much in my nature). I'm a social worker, and have never asked potential adopters to get voluntary experience because there's no voluntary experience in the world that will prepare you for caring for your own child, for sitting with them at 2.00am fighting a fever, or persuading them to get dressed etc. Parenting is a completely different kettle of fish, the emotional involvement is different, the relationship is entirely different - it can't be taught or learned other than in the process of doing it.

Are you willing to put yourself out a bit? Are you resourceful enough? Can you find the time if you absolutely need to?

That's both underhand and opressive practice, those issues can easily be covered in the assessment process by upfront discussion, the process enough is disruptive to daily life, and intrusive, and inconvenient - and test enough of someone's resolve.

Fighting for your child, attending various appointments and meetings tends to come quite naturally when you're in a parental relationship with a small child who is dependent on you, turning up to read at a school for half an hour a week tells you entirely nothing about someone's parenting capacity or their resilience. It's lazy, lazy practice at best.