About us

Philosophy

At Clovelly Child Care Centre, we strive to ensure that our practice is very inclusive and fosters a sense of belonging. The importance of belonging is why our curriculum in the education and care sector is called BELONGING, BEING and BECOMING. Ensuring our children, families and staff feel like they are respected, and they belong, is pivotal to do what we do as educators.

We believe:

Our story begins with the notion of wonder and delight.

We know:

Children are capable, competent, active learners, and important contributors to their community.

So we:

Catch the curiosities and value all things because everything is interesting when you look closer, observe what narratives are visible and use our observations as the foundation of our curriculum.

 

We have faith that the child will reveal himself/herself through actively engaging in purposeful play. We have enormous trust in the developmental abilities of the children. Working as guides and facilitators, we create a well-prepared environment filled with objects of beauty designed to inspire our children with a deep love and reverence for learning.

 

 

Overcoming bias is one of the foundations of our philosophy

The way we do this is by bringing anti-bias reflections into our everyday practice and to think explicitly about some area of bias that we may encounter such as bias in abilities, gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality.

 

We are inspired by four basic anti-bias goals, and we use these goals as a guide to plan our curriculum and yearly events, which are:

 

  • Goal 1: Each child will demonstrate self- awareness, family pride and positive social identities;
  • Goal 2: Each child will express comfort with human diversity, accurate language for human differences and respectful and caring human connections;
  • Goal 3: Each child will increasingly recognise unfairness and understand unfairness hurts;
  • Goal 4: Each child will demonstrate empowerment to act against prejudice (Scarlet and Bryant, 2017, pp 56).

Our vision at Clovelly Child Care Centre is that they become respectful, resourceful, resilient, empathetic human beings. Resilient in the sense of having inner strength to cope with and master all sorts of situations. We want them to learn continuously and draw on their inner resources. We know that children develop a sense of belonging to their community and we encourage them to understand our responsibilities for themselves, others, and the earth. We hope that our children will not only develop an acceptance of responsibility but to seek it out.

History

Clovelly Child Care Centre was opened in 1985 with Commonwealth and State Governments funding as part of a nationwide building program. The Centre was part of the Children’s Services Program (CSP) which was designed to help mothers enter the workforce and hundreds of centres were built all over the country. Randwick City Council donated the land, and the building took nine months to complete. We are an Incorporated body, not for profit, community based and run by a parent management committee elected annually and responsible to the Department of Fair Trading.
The Centre initially offered 40 places for children aged 3 months to 5 years across two rooms. In 2000 with Commonwealth money through the Direct Partnership Program (DPP), the Centre received $80,000 in a grant and an additional $80,000 as a 20-year interest free loan to be paid back annually. These funds enabled the renovation of the adjacent Scout Hall (now the Joey’s room) and the main room at the Centre (now our Puggles room) allowing us to increase our under two’s to 12 children each day and two year old in the Plateenas room to 18 children per day.
The Centre is licensed by the State Department of Human Services formally DoCS. The whole regulatory system is currently changing as we move to a National Quality Framework. We are also using the relatively new national curriculum – The Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF), beautifully titled” Belonging, Being, and Becoming”.
There has been an active Sustainability Committee that has been very proactive and responsible for implementing many changes. They have successfully sought funding and have seen the installation of rainwater tanks, solar power, vegetable gardens and chickens. The committee organises an annual Green Fair that highlights the sustainable features at the centre. It is also an opportunity to educate in a broader way and the local community is invited along.