We're 100% Millie's Mark accredited!
We're thrilled that our nurseries are awarded Millie's Mark - and we're the first nursery group to do this!
What is Millie's Mark?
The Millie's Mark award certifies that in a nursery all practitioners are fully trained in paediatric first aid and are confident enough to deliver first aid if they need to. We're proud to say that all our practitioners are paediatric first aid trained.
Millie's Trust was set up by Joanne and Dan Thompson in 2012 after their nine month old daughter Millie tragically died from choking on food while at nursery. The organisation now campaigns to increase legal first aid requirements amongst childcare providers.
Millie's Mark is delivered by Millie's Trust in partnership with the National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA), and supported by the Department for Education.
Why Millie's Mark?
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) guidelines only require one first aid trained practitioner to be on the nursery premises at any given time. However, we wanted to go above and beyond this requirement so our parents could have complete trust in us to keep their little ones safe and secure when they're in our care.
The Millie's Mark award not only requires us to have 100% of our practitioners trained, but they need to be confident to deliver first aid too. As soon as we heard about the accreditation we couldn't wait to be involved - to ensure that we were being held to the highest possible standard, to allow us to deliver the best possible care for our children.
Our journey to 100% accreditation
We've been involved with the Millie's Mark scheme from the very beginning when it was first piloted at our Newburn nursery in 2016. Then in 2018, our Dewsbury nursery was the 300th in the UK to achieve the accreditation. Now all our nurseries have received the award, completing our hat-trick of milestones to celebrate alongside Millie's Trust and NDNA.
And all our hard work has paid off! Our amazing Learning and Development Team have worked around the clock to deliver an extensive paediatric first aid training course across all of our nurseries. This on-going programme ensures the training of all our childcare practitioners and regular refresh sessions. It's no surprise our team won the Nursery Management Today Learning and Development Award for 2018!
What this means in your local nursery
Put simply this means whichever of our nurseries your child attends, you can be confident in our promise to take the best possible care of your little ones. That, and a certain giraffe will be proudly displayed in the reception area!
"It's been a pleasure to work so closely with Co-op Childcare and we would like to congratulate all involved on such a major achievement. Co-op Childcare is the first large provider to receive the mark on such a scale and we look forward to seeing more groups reach this milestone as Millie's Mark becomes the industry standard."
Purnima Tanuku, Chief Executive - National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA)
Visit us
We'd love to show you around your local nursery. After all, you'll only truly know if we're the right nursery for you and your family be taking a look around.
Book a visit and you'll get to meet our trusted team, ask as many questions as you like, and explore the different areas of the nursery.