Day Care Practitioner
As a Practitioner or Advanced Practitioner, you’ll be responsible for providing day care for children in an unsupervised or a supervisory role. Assistant Practitioners would provide day care to children in a non-supervisory role.
Being a Day Care Practitioner
Working as part of a team you'll help to create a safe, welcoming and inclusive environment for children, to support their care, play, learning and development. You'll observe and record children’s development, progress, interests, and any problems that may occur. You’ll plan educational activities to support their continued learning.
You’ll provide care such as feeding, changing nappies, and setting routines. You’ll encourage socialising and help children discover new interests. You’ll also prepare children to enter the next level of care into school.
You can also progress to become an Advanced Practitioner, where you’ll lead on an area, for example Foundation phase or additional learning needs.
About the workplace
Day nurseries and crèches provide an essential service to working parents by offering childcare to children from birth. The terms day nursery, day care and crèche are used interchangeably to describe the place where parents send their children to be taken care of during work hours in the day.
Stori Sam
Getting started as a Day Care Practitioner
To be successful in this role, you’ll need:
- a caring and patient nature
- good communication, including verbal and listening skills
- imagination and creativity
- to be able to adapt to changing situations
- to make sure every child is included
- to be able to take direction from the Advanced Practitioner/Manager
- confidence around children and adults
- to be able to provide direction to Assistant Practitioners
You might want to consider the Introduction to childcare programme that covers the essentials you need to start working in childcare.
Required Qualifications
Find the required or recommended qualifications for this role with Social Care Wales.
