Wivenhoe Park Day Nursery host a variety of events every year
Our Christmas and Summer events are free to join for both current and prospective parents. These great events allow our parents and carers a chance to explore our beautiful grounds, meet our team and enjoy a variety of fun activities. Throughout the year we also host a number of topical events for current parents to come along including a mini Graduation for our school leavers on the University of Essex campus alongside our Essex graduates.
We are very proud of our nursery and think it’s a great place for your child to thrive but don’t just take our word for it, read the reviews left by parents on Google.
Parents Group
The Parents Group is an open forum and any parent of the nursery is welcome to join, with meetings taking place once a month to discuss future developments, policies, and procedures and many other aspects of our child care provision. Parents create an agenda of items that they would like to raise with the nursery staff, and where appropriate, decisions are made together. We really want our parents to feel valued and part of the nursery community by supporting our fundraising events and having a say in their child’s day. These meetings are a great way to meet other parents as well as develop relationships with the staff and learn more about how decisions are made within the nursery.
If you would like to become a member of our Parents Group, please ask for more information at Reception or email nursery@essex.ac.uk.
We are very proud of our nursery and think it’s a great place for your child to thrive but don’t just take our word for it, read the reviews left by parents on Google.
Health and nutrition are important to us
Wivenhoe Park Day Nursery work with Professional Nursery Kitchen to create healthy and nutritious meals throughout the nursery day. Operating a rolling menu across a three weekly basis allows us to ensure there is variety in your child’s meals. If you need to make us aware of any allergies or other dietary requirements for your child, please just have a chat with your Key Person and we will ensure that we provide a suitable alternative.
Have a look at our NEW 2024 menus here.
We are committed to providing a range of benefits to our University of Essex student parents of the nursery.
Priority admissions – As part of our admissions policy, student applications are the first priority for available sessions, putting our students in an advantageous position to secure childcare places at the Nursery. Spaces and sessions are incredibly popular and become booked up very quickly, so we see this as a real benefit to the student parents who wish to bring their children to our setting.
Term time only contracts – Aligned to Higher Education student term dates (38 weeks) – Term time only session offers are very rare in private provision.
No top up/additional costs added on to session fees – we believe in removing barriers to accessing funded hours, so all children can benefit from rich early educational experiences. Funded sessions can be used for any session, (subject to availability). Nursery fees are reduced for students at Wivenhoe Park Day Nursery and are very competitive.
There is a really useful website which details all the help available to parents and student parents, https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk/. This enables a range of circumstances to be entered, to check entitlement to the different types of financial support available to you, through free funded hours, grants, allowances, and tax relief, (the website helps you to check your eligibility).
University of Essex hardship fund – Available to fully registered UK, EU or International undergraduate or postgraduate students studying at the University of Essex, to support students experiencing unexpected or unforeseen financial difficulty and are from a low-income household. This includes childcare costs – https://www.essex.ac.uk/student/money/funding-and-financial-support/hardship-fund
Wivenhoe Park Day Nursery is an approved childcare setting, which means that we are registered to accept government funded childcare spaces – https://www.gov.uk/get-childcare
Session flexibility – Following application and once a suitable space has been allocated to your child (confirmed via email), we allow students to request ad hoc changes to sessions e.g. move days as long as they are taken within the same week, and add additional sessions if needed, (subject to availability). We also allow students to book full-time sessions, (subject to availability) to secure their child a space and reduce this down when their timetables are published.
The Day Nursery administrators are also on hand to offer further advice, just call us on 01206 873224 or email nursery@essex.ac.uk.
Please have a look at our updated Nursery policies below.
Admissions Policy and Procedure
Parents and Carers as Partners
Safeguarding Children Policy and Procedures
Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Policy