CAITLIN LEAR

I have been working for my current employer for the past three years, as soon as I finished my apprenticeship at my previous employers. I have taken on many different roles and responsibilities during this time, which include:

• As a pre-school room leader, I led a team consisting of myself and 4 other staff members, ensuring effective communication within our room and the rest of the nursery, while also keeping in mind the care of the children.
• Settling children in when they first start in the nursery, allowing myself to form a strong bond with both the child and their parents or carers, so that the parents can be sure the child will be comfortable in my care.
• Supporting staff members by helping them with their responsibilities, whether it be assisting them with their observations, cleaning, or supporting in different rooms if someone needs to step out.
• Setting up different activities for children each day and ensuring that they're in relation to anything that may be happening e.g. holidays, celebrations and also ensuring they're engaging for children and can help them meet their individual goals.
• Assisted in maintaining cleanliness and hygiene standards to ensure safe environments for children.

The skills that I learnt through waitressing, I have been able to apply to my childcare role, which include:

• Making sure everywhere is clean to ensure everyone's safety and comfort.
• Enhanced customer satisfaction by promptly attending to queries and requests, which also helps me when communicating to parents if they have any queries or questions.
• Helping people in other sections if they need assistance.

For 18 months, I worked at a childminders so that I could gain my Level 3 childcare qualification. During this time, I learnt many different skills which I still use now that I'm qualified; these include the correct information to use during handovers to parents, certain policies and procedures, and activities that need setting up, etc.

As I was only working part-time when I was an apprentice, I also took on a second job as a waitress. Although this was difficult, it gave me the opportunity to build my confidence, as both of my jobs required me to talk to different people on different professional levels, which has definitely helped in my work now. My time management has also improved, as I had to balance two jobs as well as finding time to do my off-the-job hours, which means that if I'm given multiple different tasks to do, I'm able to complete them all within the correct timeframe, and also give attention to detail for each individual task.