A LEADING Kendal nursery has been rewarded for its dedication to making every child reach their full potential.

Carron Nugent, joint manager, and Natalie Bigland, deputy, at Stramongate Nursery travelled to the annual awards ceremony of Nursery World, the industry's magazine, to pick up the 'Inclusive Practice' award.

"For us ‘inclusion’ means trying hard to treat each child differently according to their needs to give each and every child the best possible opportunity to reach their potential," said Ms Nugent.

"Last year we had several children with us who were vulnerable and emotionally needy, often communicating by force for a range of reasons, so we focused on their wellbeing.

"Unless someone, adult or child, is emotionally secure, they cannot learn effectively. Therefore we needed to address this before we started encouraging our children to learn through play, as directed in our curriculum.

"These children settled and blossomed. We monitor all children’s progress through all seven areas of our curriculum every term and our monitoring showed our children making leaps in their development.

She added: "The awards evening was amazing, a surreal experience and inspirational listening to the stories of all the finalists. None of us realised how little we expected to win until we did. A very small northern fish against an awful lot of big southern settings, chains of nurseries, people with consultant support and us, four core staff in a small portacabin.

"As the judges said we provide ‘exceptional practice and planning for every child.’ So those who think people in nurseries just play with play-dough all day, please think again."