CALA Practitioner Portal

The purpose of this dedicated portal is to provide a one-stop ‘shop’ to enable all practitioners working with and or for children and young people to access the latest guidance, childcare-related news, information, useful weblinks, CPL opportunities and national guidance documents to ensure you are appropriately supported, well informed and empowered to keep up to speed with key information for childcare practitioners. Your portal will be updated frequently, therefore, we recommend you visit on a weekly basis.

Click through the slides below for our current ‘Practitioner Picks’

Early Learning and Childcare in Highland

Professional learning materials for EYPs and others working in ELC

This website will support all Early Years Practitioners and other staff who work in Early Learning and Childcare in Highland.

Click here

bumps to bairns

Early help for children 0-7 years

This website has lots of ideas for play and learning, along with support ideas and advice if you have concerns about a child’s development.

Click here

Current updates

Care Inspectorate

Quality Framework for daycare of children, childminding and school-aged childcare (SAC)

Click here

Child Protection Guidance and Toolkit for Third Sector Organisations in Highland

This Guidance has been produced for larger Third Sector Organisations and those with a number of paid staff who should have robust child protection policies and procedures in place. This Guidance sits behind the Highland Child Protection Committee Guidelines and provides further tools to help support the recruitment of staff and volunteers, as well as more detailed guidance on child protection issues.

Click here

Child Protection Guidance and Toolkit for Community Groups in Highland

This Guidance has been developed by the Highland Child Protection Committee for Community Groups providing activities for children, young people and families in Highland. This may include sports groups, arts and crafts clubs, religious groups or any organised groups/activities which involve regular contact with children and young people.

Click here

Practice guidance

Highland and National practice guidance and support tools for practitioners.

A quality framework for daycare of children, childminding and school-aged childcare

The primary purpose of this quality framework is to support services to evaluate their own performance. It is then used by inspectors to provide independent assurance about the quality of care and support.

Within the framework there is a scrutiny toolbox, which provides examples of the scrutiny actions Care Inspectorate may use in evaluating the quality of provision.

The resources within the document are key practice documents that help services in their own improvement journey. These are listed under each relevant key question.

FAQ

Consulting with our youngest children toolkit

Consultation with young children is more than just asking their views, it is about really listening to and responding to them. It’s also about facilitating their ability to influence things that affect them and help adults to know and understand their concerns or worries through the child’s eyes enabling adults to help protect them from harm.

The strategies in this tool can be used by adults working on an individual basis with a young child for a specific purpose or by adults who have significant contact with young children on a frequent basis embedding meaningful consultation in daily practice.

An e-book guidance document is also available to support implementation and for those seeking some further guidance on using the toolkit – CLICK HERE to access

Good practice guidance: prevention and management
of choking episodes in babies and children