Equal Opportunities

We aim to

• Acknowledge and value equally through each child’s individual stage, culture, religion, language, racial background and family group.
• Actively seek to combat sexism and promote equal opportunities for girls and boys, women and men.
• Encourage equality of opportunity for children with special needs and their families.

To achieve the above we will 

• Plan our programme to extend the children’s experience and knowledge of other cultures, languages and celebrations.
• Ensure that the activities reflect the diversity of our society, not just our group.
• Encourage children to explore in a positive way the differences and diversity of people, ensuring those representations of people are accurate and realistic.
• Positively challenge stereotypes and assumptions – racist, sexist or concerning disabilities.
• Enable adults with disabilities to take part in our group where it is safe and reasonable to so do.

 Employment

• Posts are advertised and all applicants are judged against explicit and fair criteria.
• Applicants are welcome from all backgrounds and posts are open to all.
• We may use the exemption clauses in relevant legislation to enable the service to best meet the needs of the community.
• The applicant who best meets the criteria is offered the post, subject to references and checks by the Disclosure & Barring Service. This ensures fairness in the selection process.
• All job descriptions include a commitment to promoting equality and recognising and respecting diversity as part of their specifications.
• We monitor our application process to ensure that is fair and accessible.

 Training

• We seek out training opportunities for staff and volunteers to enable them to develop anti-discriminatory and inclusive practices, which enable all children to flourish.
• We ensure that staff are confident and fully trained in administering relevant medicines and performing invasive care procedures when these are required.
• We review our practices to ensure that we are fully implementing our policy for promoting equality, valuing diversity and inclusion.

Curriculum

Our environment is as accessible as possible for all visitors and service users. If access to the setting is found to treat disabled children or adults less favourably then we make reasonable adjustments to accommodate the needs of disabled children or adults. We do this by:

• Making children feel valued and good about themselves.
• Ensuring that children have equality of access to learning.
• Undertaking an access audit to establish if the setting is accessible to all children.
• Making adjustments to the environment and resources to accommodate a wide range of learning.
• Adjusting our environment to suit physical and sensory impairments.
• Making appropriate provision within the curriculum to ensure each child receives the widest possible opportunity to develop their skills and abilities, eg. Recognising the different learning styles of girls and boys.
• Positively reflecting the widest possible range of communities in the choice of resources.
• Avoiding stereotypes or derogatory images in the selection of books and other visual materials.
• Celebrating British Values.
• Creating an environment of mutual respect and tolerance.
• Helping children to understand that discriminatory behaviour and remarks are hurtful and unacceptable.
• Ensuring that the curriculum offered is inclusive of children with special educational needs and children with disabilities.
• Ensuring children learning English as an additional language have full access to the curriculum and are supported in their learning.

 Valuing diversity in families

• We welcome the diversity of family lifestyles and work with all families.
• We encourage children to contribute stories of their everyday life to the setting.
• We encourage parents/carers to take part in the life of the setting and to contribute fully.
• If a child attends nursery with a home language which is not English then every effort will be made to support the child in his/her home language whilst at nursery. Steps to take may include labelling activities in the child’s home language and providing dual language resources. The Avenue Nursery will work closely with the child and his/her family to ensure that we are supporting the child’s learning both at nursery and home.

 Food 

• We work in partnership with parents to ensure that the medical, cultural and dietary needs of children are met.
• We help children to learn about a range of food, and of cultural approaches to mealtimes and eating, and to respect the differences among them.