Kids Planet Day Nurseries has partnered with safeguarding and wellbeing software provider CPOMS as part of a focus on the safety and wellbeing of children and staff across the rapidly-growing group.

CPOMS will be rolled out across Kids Planet’s 300 plus nurseries in the UK and Ireland. As Kids Planet has grown to operate at significant scale, consistent safeguarding across every setting is critical, said Kids Planet chief operating officer Lucy Kaczmarska.

“Safeguarding is such an important part of what we do, and it has to be at the forefront of everything,” she said. “We are constantly looking at what we are doing, and how we can make things better. The very first thing we always do in our new nurseries is to embed our safeguarding policies and procedures.”

Kids Planet will use CPOMS StudentSafe to give nursery managers and practitioners a consistent way to log and track safeguarding concerns, CPOMS Insight to give leaders clear visibility into safeguarding patterns across all settings and CPOMS StaffSafe to manage staff welfare records, giving leaders a complete picture of child and staff welfare, including staff wellbeing and mental health.

Kaczmarska said the system would allow the company to spot risk, identify patterns in particular areas or across the group, spotlight nurseries that might need more support, enable whistleblowing and the raising of concerns, and put relevant training in place. “Local authorities have different hot topics around safeguarding and this will help us to spot those issues, such as domestic abuse, almost before they are being raised to us by the local authority,” said Kaczmarska.

“Kids Planet is widely recognised for the quality and consistency of its early years provision, and we’re delighted to welcome them as a CPOMS partner,” said Rick Gardner, managing director at CPOMS. “Their approach demonstrates leadership in safeguarding across the private day care sector, and we’re proud to be working with an organisation that shares our commitment to protecting children and supporting staff with the right systems in place.”

Kaczmarska said the partnership with CPOMS was part of a larger picture when it comes to safeguarding at the organization.  “Every Monday our senior leaders come together in a process we call triage, to discuss and review everything that has happened across the group, whether that is regarding children, colleagues, buildings or whatever it may be,” she said. “We are still very hands-on as a company.”

Kids Planet also has CCTV in every setting, to reassure parents and protect children and team members. “There have been lots of debates over CCTV in the last 12 months but we have always found it positive,” said Kaczmarska.

The company plans to launch a Leading Safeguarding Excellence Committee with representatives from across the group as well as critical friends from outside the organization. “The committee will look at whether policies are as robust as they need to be, and is there anything better we can do,” said Kaczmarska. “We are always taking on new sites, so is there anything we can learn from settings that have joined us this last quarter, is there anything we could implement that is different to what we currently do?”

Kids Planet will communicate with parents to share details of its new partnership with CPOMS. “A lot of our parents already know what CPOMS is, because it is widely used in schools, but for others it is just an acronym so it is about bringing that to life, explaining why we have it in place and how it is protecting children and keeping them safe at all times,” said Kaczmarska.