Drowning in paperwork part three by Blossom Educational

29th March 2017

For the last month, Stacey had been searching for an online platform to help her with all of the administration involved in running her nursery. As much as she loved working with her children, she couldn’t help but spend over half of her time focusing on paperwork.

After speaking to a number of online system providers, Stacey was in despair. They didn’t seem to understand the real challenges of being an Early Years practitioner. The only glimmer of hope for Stacey was a conversation she had with Bianca, an Early Years Practitioner and Customer Lead from Blossom Educational. She was the only one who seemed to understand Stacey’s concerns and frustrations.

I – Sara – as the Founder of Blossom Educational, like to visit as many of the nurseries using our platform as possible. I have spent my career working on the ‘front-line’ of Early Years, as a practitioner and a manager. Blossom was created as a result of my experience of the immense amount of information and paperwork we are required to keep about our children. I felt that my practitioners and I were spending so much time on this, that it took away from what is most important – working with children.

I was excited about meeting Stacey, as I was sure that Blossom would be able to help her. We met in her setting on a (surprisingly) sunny afternoon, and spent an hour talking her through all of the features of our platform. I showed her the ease with which she could add children’s registration and ‘all about me’ information, and register children with the touch of a button. I talked her through how she can record all of the day-to-day activities of children (including ‘daily diary’ information about children’s meals, sleeps etc.) as well as log observations and easily link these to a range of frameworks (including EYFS Development Matters, Characteristics of Effective Learning, and a special framework for Montessori nurseries).

Stacey loved that with our ‘parent app’, at the press of a button, parents can be kept updated with their children’s progress. She particularly liked that she could share as much – or as little – information as she wanted to – and everything has to be approved by her before it is made available for parents to view.

We want nurseries to make sure that Blossom is right for their settings, and so I left Stacey with a no-commitment month’s trial to test out Blossom.

***

Two weeks later Nikita, one of the passionate members of the Blossom team, called Stacey to see how she was doing. She was over the moon. She had already added all 86 of her children onto the platform, and had completed 943 observations!

One of Stacey’s biggest fears was the need for her to complete cohort tracking for the children, and she was amazed to find that with Blossom, progress reports for children and cohort tracking reports can be created instantly, based on children’s observations and their progress against her selected frameworks.

All of her team loved using Blossom, and they found that it was making their lives so much easier. Although they were all initially worried, they could not believe how easily they were able to get used to the platform. They already couldn’t imagine life without it!

Stacey is excited that we are currently busy creating our management platform, which will enable her to manage her children’s invoices, her staffing rotas and ratios, assess her current and forecasted occupancy, and keep track of her finances as simply as possible. She will have even more time to do what she loves doing – working with her children!

Sara Dhokia – Founder of Blossom and Early Years Practitioner

N.B. All names have been changed, as ‘Stacey’ is a little camera-shy. However, you can get in touch with us if you would like to speak with the nursery in question. We are always available on 01923 545 200.