And finally... the dreaded paperwork!
You will need to have in place a comprehensive set of policies, procedures and forms, from administering medication to sign-in sheets for visitors, with many, many others in between. Don't panic if you're running short of time and energy: we've simplified your task by collecting them all into sets of downloadable Word templates.
Policies and procedures
Our Essential Policies Pack contains the six policies explicitly required by Welfare and Safeguarding Requirements of the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (2024), in addition we have included five other policies which are either implicitly required by EYFS 2024, or are required by other legislation.
| Policy | Para* |
| Administering medication policy | 3.46 |
| Complaints policy | 3.75 |
| Emergency evacuation procedure | 3.56 |
| Equalities policy | 3.20 |
| EYFS policy | 3.74 |
| Health and safety policy | 3.55 |
| Missing child policy | 3.74 |
| Safeguarding policy | 3.4 |
| Staff behaviour policy | n/a |
| Uncollected child policy | 3.74 |
| Visitor policy | 3.63 |
| Policies in bold are explicitly required by EYFS Statutory Framework (2023) | |
| * Relevant paragraph number in the EYFS Statutory Framework (2023) | |
A more extensive set of template policies, (together with a range of other documentation) is available in our Start-up Pack.
Forms
The EYFS Statutory Framework also requires you to keep written records of certain key items of data. These are listed below. We have also indicated which of our template forms you can use to record that data, and which of our template packs contains the form.
| Records required by EYFS | OOSA form | OOSA pack* |
| Complaints received from parents, and their outcomes | Complaints Record | Forms pack |
| All medicines administered to children | Record of Medication Given | Forms pack |
| Accidents and first aid treatment while in care of the provider | Accident Record | Forms pack |
| Record that the required Disclosure and Barring Service checks have been carried out for all people who may have unsupervised access to the children | Central DBS Record | Employment pack |
For each child in your care, a record of:
| Registration Form | Forms pack |
| Name, home address and telephone number of the provider and any other person living or employed on the premises | Staff Record | Employment pack |
| Name, home address and telephone number of anyone who will regularly be in unsupervised contact with the children attending the early years provision | Staff Record | Employment pack |
| Daily record of the names of the children looked after on the premises, their hours of attendance and the name of each child's key person | Daily Register (hours) Registration Form (key worker) | Forms pack |
| * Note that all the documents in the Forms and Employment Packs are also included in the Start-up Pack. | ||
As well as these forms for the records required by EYFS, you will also find it useful to have access to additional forms, such as fire drill records, play plans and pre-existing injury forms. Again, to save you time and effort, we have put together a downloadable set of Word templates for all the forms you are likely to need. See the Forms Pack for more details.
Liaising with parents
Once your club is up and running you will need to carry out customer satisfaction surveys of parents and children, and you might find it helpful to have a club handbook to give out to parents. Templates of these and other useful documents are available in the Parent Communication Pack.
Managing your staff
You will need to follow safe recruitment procedures when employing new staff as well as ensuring that they undergo a proper induction procedure. And you need to effectively supervise all staff and ensure that they receive regular appraisals and appropriate training. Template documentation to help you recruit and manage your staff is available in our Employment and Management Pack and our Staff Induction Pack.
And finally...
And the rest is up to you, so we wish you the very best of luck with setting up your club!