Ask a practitioner when their relationship with a family begins and most will say the settling-in visits. In truth it starts earlier: the first phone enquiry, the show-around with a pram in the hallway, the tone of the first email. By the time the child hangs their coat on a peg, the family has already decided quite a lot about whether you’re people they can talk to.
That matters more than almost anything else we do, for a simple reason. Parents and carers are the most significant influence on children’s development, and studies show the quality of the home learning environment has a stronger effect on children’s intellectual and social development than any other factor. Stronger than us, in other words. A nursery that works in genuine partnership with parents is reaching into the place where the biggest difference gets made.
Two-way, or it isn’t a partnership
The EYFS Statutory Framework identifies relationships with parents as an essential element of ‘Enabling Environments’. So this is core practice rather than an optional extra, and the operative word is relationships: plural, and two-way. Information has to flow in both directions. You know things about the child’s Tuesday that the family doesn’t, and they know things about the child’s world that you never will. Share both, and you can respond to individual children’s needs together instead of in parallel.
What does that look like day to day? A proper conversation at handover rather than “fine, she ate well”. A note home about the worm hunt that dominated the morning, so bedtime chat can pick it up. Asking, genuinely, what the child is into at home this month, and letting the answer shape your planning. Different families need different channels too: the parent you see daily, the one on shifts you never see, the one far more comfortable writing than talking.
There’s a quieter benefit as well. When trust is built in the easy weeks, the harder conversations, about development or behaviour or a concern, start from solid ground rather than from a standing start.
It’s worth being honest about the families you rarely see, too. Every setting has them: the parent who works away, the one whose own school years left them wary of anything that feels official, the one juggling three drop-offs before eight o’clock. Absent from the hallway is not the same as uninterested, and partnership with those families gets built differently. A photo sent at the right moment. A phone call that isn’t about a problem. An invitation that doesn’t assume a weekday morning is free. Small adjustments, but they carry a message every family reads clearly: this partnership includes you as well. And when one of those parents does appear at the door, the welcome they get in that first minute will do more than any newsletter.
Training the craft, not leaving it to charm
Some practitioners are naturals at this. Most of us do better with a framework. Our Building Partnerships with Parents course covers why partnership matters and what the EYFS expects of your setting, when the relationship with a family really starts, ways to communicate effectively with different parents and carers, and how shared information supports children’s learning at home and in your setting. It takes around an hour online, which makes it easy to roll out across a whole team as part of induction, a staff-meeting focus or individual CPD.
As the spring term winds down towards Easter, it’s a natural moment to take stock. New families will be joining after the break, and the shape of their first weeks with you is being set right now.
Make every family feel like a partner
One hour of NFAQ-accredited training on communication, two-way information sharing and the parent partnerships the EYFS expects of your setting.
The pram in the hallway is a beginning. What it becomes depends on both sides of the door, and your side of it can be practised.