What the nursery office holds about your child

Dear parents and carers,

This letter sets out what the office holds about your child and about you, and what each of those papers is for. First Steps Infant Care Ltd is registered in England & Wales under company number 14137688, was incorporated on 27 May 2022, and carries D-U-N-S number 228975869. Its registered office is at 9 Boniface Walk, Harrow, HA3 6PU, and everything described here is held by that company at that address.

The registration form you complete before a first session is the root of your child's file. It carries your child's full name and date of birth, your home address, the room they are joining, the days and hours you have booked, and the names and telephone numbers of every adult you authorise to collect them. It also records your own e-mail address, which is the address the office writes to when a menu changes, when a room moves up, or when your child needs collecting early. That form sits in a locked cabinet in the office while your child attends, while a room copy of the collection names stays at the door so the person signing your child out is checked against a list you wrote yourself.

The registration form: Names, address, booked days, collection names and passwords. Held in the office cabinet, copied in part to the room door.
The daily sheet: Meals, sleep, changes and the activity of the day. Written in the room, handed to you at collection, filed at the end of the week.
The allergy and dietary card: Copied from the form onto the room list and onto the card at your child's place at the table.
The medicine sheet: Each dose given during a session, signed by two adults in the room and countersigned by you at the door.
The learning record: Photographs and short written notes gathered by the key adult while your child is in the room.
Your e-mail: Enquiries and messages sent to the office address, kept with the enquiry or with your child's file when a place follows.

The daily sheet is written by the room as the day runs, and a copy is handed to you at collection. It carries the times of meals with a note on how much was eaten, the times of nappy changes or trips to the toilet, the length and place of any sleep, and a line on the activity your child joined. Those sheets are gathered into the file at the end of the week, so a room lead can look back over a fortnight when you ask how your child is settling. They are read by the adults working in your child's room and by the nursery manager, and they travel no further than the office.

Photographs of your child are taken during activities and in the garden, and they are used in the room display book, in the learning record and on the sheet you are handed at collection. Consent for each of those three uses is given on the registration form as three separate ticks, so you can allow one use while holding back another. When you change your mind about a tick, tell the nursery manager and the change is applied to the file and to the room display the same day. The images stay on the nursery device and the office computer.

Allergy, dietary and medicine information is held with more care than the rest of the file. An allergy, an intolerance, a prescribed medicine or anything else the room needs to know is written on the registration form, copied onto the room list, and copied again onto the card at your child's place at the table. Each dose given during a session goes on a medicine sheet and is signed by two adults, while you sign the same sheet at collection so the record matches at both ends. The file is closed when your child leaves and stored for the retention period that early-years regulation sets for children's records, after which it is destroyed; the nursery manager will tell you the exact period for a particular paper when you ask.

Two things about this website itself are worth stating plainly. These pages ask Google's font servers for the two typefaces the site is set in, so your browser makes a request to Google while a page loads, and Google receives that request as part of serving the fonts. The address nursery@firststepsinfant.life arrives in the office inbox, is read by the nursery manager, and is kept with your enquiry or with your child's file when a place follows. The calculators on the other pages work entirely inside your own browser, so the figures you type into them are never sent anywhere.

As the parent or carer named on the form, you may ask for any of the following at any time:

A copy of everything held about your child, given to you on paper at the office.
A correction to any detail on the file, such as an address, a telephone number or a collection name.
The withdrawal of a photograph consent you gave, applied to the file and to the room display.
The transfer of the learning record to the school or setting your child moves on to.
A conversation with the nursery manager about anything on the daily sheets, at the door or by appointment.
The matter to be put to the Information Commissioner's Office when the answer you are given leaves you unsatisfied.

Please put any of these to the nursery manager, whose address is nursery@firststepsinfant.life, or ask at the office door at collection. The manager holds the cabinet keys and answers questions about every record described in this letter.

With warm regards,
The nursery office at First Steps Infant Care Ltd

Take me back to the day, the rooms and the shape of a session