My Guest Blogger - Sally Bonnar!

Hi my name is Sally Bonnar and this week I am the Guest Blogger while Phil is away. My job in the Society is Chief Operating Officer for Childcare. 

A few words about me …

The observant amongst you will notice that my name has changed from Mayer to Bonnar after finally tying the knot on 1^st June after ten years together. Now for the drama of officially changing my name with all the governing bodies who really don’t make it particularly easy …..

My journey started in Childcare when I was 16 years old and now with a career spanning over 20 years I have gained a wealth of knowledge and experience in the childcare sector.

 

Some facts about the Childcare Group …

• The Childcare group employs the highest number of colleagues in Midcounties after Food Retail, nearly 1300 colleagues

• We care for over 6000 children every week, that’s 0.15% of the under 4’s UK population

• 90% of Childcare customers are Midcounties Co-operative members despite nearly half our nurseries operating outside of the traditional core trading geography

• All nurseries are Ofsted ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’

• Commercial performance within the group has seen year on year improvement with profits increasing by over ½ million in 2018/19

 

My proudest moments …

We have come along way in the last couple of years, from the basics of ensuring consistency and delivery of high quality early years provisions across all 44 nurseries to a shared vision of driving real change for children and their families. Re-branding works have commenced that will see ’Little Pioneers’ above the doors of nurseries that truly embody a strengthened co-operative feeling. I love the look and feel of the our 8 re-branded nurseries and I am excited to get my teeth into the next schedule of Little Pioneers nurseries – watch this space! More on this later when I talk ‘long term strategy’!

 Did you know that every single Childcare colleagues is Paediatric First Aid (PFA) trained therefore we are the first and only large provider to achieve the Millie’s Mark accreditation, the gold standard in keeping children safe and shows that we will always go above and beyond the minimum regulatory requirements which is only one qualified PFA practitioner per nursery! Here is a photo of us visiting our Forum nursery in Manchester with MP Andy Burnham and Millie’s daddy and founder of Millie’s Trust.

Alongside our on-going commitment of community intergenerational programmes, we continue to educate our youngest generations about social responsibility and how the simplest of things can make the biggest difference in protecting our planet. After all you are never too small to make a difference and in the words of one of our pre-schoolers when asked why they go litter picking in the local community, ‘’to make the world happy’’

We do as much as we can to keep children in touch with the real world and have recently introduced our ‘’Healthy Living & Well-being’’ programme.  In 2016 the Guardian reported 28% of 2-15 year olds were overweight or obese, at Co-op Childcare nurseries children are taught hands on about nutrition, how food grows with them planting, harvesting and eating produce from nursery gardens.  The role we play in early years for the health of future generations and connecting children to food origins, not only builds an understanding of food sources but by teaching children where food comes from also lays the foundations for making healthy eating choices and making healthy connections before entering school.

We have much more that we can do to drive change for children and we won’t stop here!

 

Our long term strategy …

Little Pioneers want to offer big differences. Big differences lead by what matters to our members, our children and our communities. We’ve been on a journey over the last 4 years and are still on it trying to get that offer right. Being a different kind of childcare business is hugely challenging given the heavy regulatory pressures all nurseries face but alongside exceptional child development we’re shifting our focus to truly make our members lives less complicated, be that a simple take away coffee in the morning or the option of accessing a trusted babysitter on the weekend.

The key is listening to our members and going above and beyond the nursery walls to truly deliver the co-operative difference which for us is about listening and acting on the insight we gather. We know we make a real positive impact in the lives of the families we care for and believe we have a real opportunity to better serve our communities by taking the lead on things that make big differences so by educating children about food to help them make better choices, by focussing on getting children ready for school, by teaching children the values of democracy, openness, equality and social responsibility and by supporting busy mums and dads we can truly deliver our co-operative difference.

We welcome any ideas and thoughts on how to improve our business, we’re built on word of mouth after all, so please do keep submitting your GIFTS – no idea is a bad idea!

 

In other news ….

During our Leadership event last week, Clare Downs received her 20 year service award – a huge congratulations to Clare and thank you for the years of valuable contribution!

I attended an early years conference last week where Dr Andy Cope, who believe it or not is the UK’s first  Dr of happiness 😊  He presented on how to be brilliant every day and got us to think about our mindsets and being on form every day.  With the weeks zipping by and weekends providing brief respite, Andy has a quirky way of offering practical ways to change your thinking, the same habits and rekindling your Monday mojo. Take a look

 A BIG shout out to Team Childcare whom without we couldn’t make this all happen. #keepshining

 

And finally...

On Saturday we celebrated International Day of Co-operatives #Coopsday in style by retweeting co-operative content from around the world. We had retweets from the President of the ICA (International Co-operative Alliance) and the United Nations, however, the highlight was undoubtedly this tweet from the Pope!