At this year’s Childbase Partnership conference, the group celebrated several record results.

 ‘We believe in you, and you always deliver’ was the message for employee owners.

The largest turnout yet, the group welcomed over 1,000 employee owners from 44 award winning day nurseries across England and additionally celebrated being named a top UK Best Workplace in two major awards.

Emma Rooney, Childbase Partnership chief executive said:

“Our success does not happen by chance – you make it possible. We don’t stand still at Childbase – we want more for the children in our care and more for each other.

“Our ‘people first – no compromises’ approach delivers results and each of us as employee owners has a role to play in building on these achievements. There is no limit to what we can achieve by working together.”

Record results

Rooney stated that the current focus at the company remains on providing targeted support to help colleagues meet ‘cost of living’ challenges this year. This follows an £8.5 million investment in increased salaries, free meals at work, discounted shopping deals and wellbeing and mental health initiatives introduced in December.     

The results include high levels of customer satisfaction – parent 10/10 reviews earned the company a Daynurseries ‘Top 20’ nursery group in the UK award. Furthermore, the group landed eight Ofsted ‘Outstanding’ ratings in the latest round of inspections.

Childbase is the only early years provider named a Top 10 Sunday Times Best Place to Work 2023 (highly commended in the ‘Best Places to work for 16-34 years olds’ category and ‘Excellent’ in all six areas of areas of assessment) and was rated number 14 in the UK Great Place to Work Awards 2023.

TV personality Stephen Mulhern performed magic tricks and involved conference goers in a number of fun games and presented ‘Best of the Best’ Trophies to annual award winners at the evening gala event.

The Rainforest themed events were described as a perfect expression of the decade’s long commitment by Childbase Partnership, an Eco-Schools’ Early Years Provider of the Year 2023, to achieving best environmental practice.

Both events were designed to be as ‘carbon neutral’ as possible with the small amount of carbon that couldn’t be addressed, because they were indoor events, offset with contributions to certified climate projects.