EMC Philosophy

Early Milestones Childcare acknowledges the Dharug and Gandangara people as the Traditional Custodians of the land upon which we meet. We pay respect to the Elders of the past, present and emerging, and acknowledge their spiritual connection to Country.

Early Milestones Childcare provides a caring, nurturing, and stimulating environment which fosters a child’s natural curiosity, love for learning and potential to be and become the best learners that they can be. We are committed to upholding the rights of the child, and acknowledge each child’s unique qualities and abilities. Our view is that each child is a strong, capable, and active learner who brings to our centre a wealth of knowledge and experience of their family and community. We aim to act as an extension to their home environment, and provide a consistency which will help them feel safe, respected and secure. We promote our children’s independence and agency by encouraging them to make choices and decisions around all aspects of their day, including taking initiative and leading their own learning. At Early Milestones Childcare, we are committed to embedding the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations into our culture to foster child safety and wellbeing.

Our interactions with children are responsive, positive, constructive, and encouraging. We acknowledge the uniqueness and potential of each child and aim to meet their individual needs. We role model and guide positive behaviours, and demonstrate understanding and acceptance when dealing with challenging behaviour. All children have an equal opportunity to learn and be respected and not discriminated against regardless of gender, age, ability, economic status, family structure, ethnicity, lifestyle, religion, culture or language. We educate children about similarities and differences between themselves, families and communities and help to promote positive self-esteem in all children. We ensure families with additional needs are included and we offer support, guidance and assistance as needed.

Early Milestones Childcare recognises that families are the foundation in a child’s growth and development, and strive to develop positive relationships with families based on mutual understanding, respect, trust and continual dialogue. We support consistency and continuity for children to create a smooth and caring transition from home life to the service, through a series of orientations. We foster collaborative partnerships with families, and make decisions together to ensure that children learn to their best of their ability. Parent participation is encouraged, and our educators work with parents to optimise the learning of each child.  We work in partnership with a variety of health professionals who support our service.

We acknowledge, respect and strive to raise awareness of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, their diverse cultures, languages and identities. Early Milestones Childcare has developed close connections with local primary schools to give our children an added sense of being a part of a larger community. Our responsibility is to provide our children with a core foundation that will support them through life to become successful learners and active members of our community.

At Early Milestones Childcare, we recognise that diversity contributes to the richness of our society. In our centre, differences are embraced and acceptance of others is always encouraged. We ensure children and families feel included and welcome by acknowledging, respecting and celebrating cultural and religious events, beliefs and practices. We strive to honour and understand differences within our community as well as to learn to effectively communicate with people across cultures. We implement experiences in our program to educate children about the similarities and differences within each family in our service and community, and promote children’s cultural competence. Educators provide the highest quality care every day to help each child achieve the best possible outcomes.

Educators follow our Centre Philosophy to help guide the programming process and the implementation of their program. Most of our educators have children of their own, so we fully understand and appreciate that we have your most precious commodity in our hands. We don’t take this responsibility lightly and we all chose to work in this field because we are dedicated to educating and caring for children in collaboration with families and always having the best interest of each child in mind.

Early Milestones Childcare has a commitment to continuous improvement and maintains a culture of ongoing critical reflection and self-assessment. Developing and maintaining a culture of learning through reflective practice enables our service to continuously improve our policies, procedures and practices, with focus on achieving quality outcomes for the children and families.