FAMILY day care educator Kate Delaney admits she is big on communication – both with her young charges and their parents.
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It means that when a child in her care has a breakthrough moment, she likes to deliver the happy news to the parent, along with the evidence, as soon as she can.
“It might be that a child has been trying to learn how to ride a bike with pedals. If they manage to do it while they’re here with me, I’ll video it, and send it along to their parents at work, along with a short message saying: ‘We did it!’”
Learning to crawl, learning to walk, and improvements in language skills are among the other common milestone moments Mrs Delaney commonly shares in pictures, and video, with parents.
“I’m very big on letting the parents know just where their child is at developmentally in terms of the Early Years Learning Framework,” she said.
And it’s an approach that parents at her Katiecare family day care centre, at Rathmines, appreciate.
So much so, in fact, that they recently nominated Mrs Delaney for the 2016 Excellence in Family Day Care Awards.
It led to her being assessed by a judging panel from Family Day Care Australia who subsequently named her winner of the regional award.
She’s now in contention to win the state crown, to be announced in November.
Mrs Delaney operates the Katiecare centre from her home.
Downstairs, the house comprises an inside play area for the children, a bedroom, large veranda, and a backyard with play equipment.
Her living area is upstairs.
“I’ve got a separate space for my family, so I’m blessed that I can easily separate the two (work and family life). I can go upstairs and I’m ‘home’,” she said.
“It’s quite an extensive space we have for the children, and I’m lucky that we are surrounded by trees.”
She cares for a maximum of five children each day.
“Because I have smaller groups, I’m able to give each child so much more attention,” she said.
“And I have the time to talk to parents, in detail, about their child’s development.”