Dear Reader,

for us, a day care centre is...

• ...a meeting place for children, parents and educators
• ...a place of education
• ...a place where your children are well looked after.

After the family, the day care centre is the first place where your children come into contact with the topics of upbringing, education and socialisation, intentionally through the educators. In addition to your loving and responsible guidance, I see it as an elementary task to support you and your children as best as possible with our professional expertise. We see ourselves as counselling experts and multipliers for upbringing and education. For your children we are: Early risers, helpers with a heart, musicians, nappy changers, toilet trainers, arbiters of disputes, tear-dryers, motivational artists, storytellers, playmates and paving the way for successful entry into school. Our day care centre sees itself as a place of experience for your children. Here they can be discoverers and actors of their own experiences and adventures. We make this possible by offering a wide range of activities and projects at the day care centre and through their very own discovery tours and adventures that arise during free play.

As a provider of day care centres - primarily for students' and staff members' children - I see it as our most important task to contribute to the success of studying with a child and to the family-friendly profile of the colleges and universities. In addition, the Studierendenwerk's facilities also serve to promote youth welfare and/or welfare work. Due to far-reaching social changes that extend into the family, it is increasingly a balancing act for you as parents to reconcile your studies, career and family life. Through lived participative mechanisms, our day care centre offers the possibility to successfully master this balancing act and to support you in the best possible way.

You as experts for your children and we as experts for upbringing and education are strong partners for a successful early childhood education, which makes your children experience the present in a variety of ways and strengthens them for their individual future.

I wish you and your child a lot of fun and joy in our institution.

Marcel Schmitt
Supervisor

The Social Code (VIII §47) defines the framework of our day care centre work. The facts described according to §47 are to be made accessible to the competent authority.
The day care centre provider is subject to a legal duty to report and document as well as a duty to keep documents related to their child and the care contract. Furthermore, the day care centre law of Rhineland-Palatinate determines the structure of our day care centres and the protection mandate in Social Code Book VIII § 8a in a supplementary form.

The Villa Unibunt day care centre is located in the middle of the Landauer Fort (municipal park) on the campus of the University of Landau. In our day care centre we offer a total of 70 full-day places in four groups for children from nine months to school age.
There are between 12-16 children from nine months to three years in the two entrance groups (Minis red and yellow). The transition to the older groups usually takes place in the autumn, when the school children have left the day care centre and new admissions are due.
The older groups (Maxis green and blue) each have 20 children from three years old until they start school.

Admission to Villa Unibunt is primarily open to students of the University of Landau. Children of employees of the University of Landau are admitted second. Children of municipal families are given lower priority if places cannot be taken up by university staff.
The catchment area for students and staff covers the whole of Rhineland-Palatinate.

Our opening hours and closing days
As a result of the day care centre law in Rhineland-Palatinate, which has been in force since 01.07.2021, parents can choose whether to register their child for 8 or 9 hours of daily care. Registration takes place annually and is binding for one kindergarten year.

• 8 hours of care from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
• 9 hours of care from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

The children are handed over to the professionals directly at the respective group doors. Access is via the garden gates. The main entrance is closed until pick-up time at 14:00.
Supervision is handed over to the professionals when the child is handed over and returned to the parents when the child is picked up. In the presence of parents on the Kita premises, the duty of supervision is always incumbent on the parents.
In order to make it easier for the children to become actively involved in group activities and play, as well as to participate in weekly activities (e.g. excursion to the fort, music workshop, etc.), we have a core time from 9:30 am to 2 pm. During this time, all children should be in the house. During the semester break in the summer, our facility has a holiday occupancy period of six weeks. For the families, this means that the children are allowed to take a break at home for at least one week within the given time frame. Irrespective of this, the Villa Unibunt day care centre has a total of 15 closing days, for example during the Christmas and Easter holidays (the annual planning is adjusted annually and handed out to all parents).

The Villa Unibunt day care centre offers all children freshly prepared lunch. The composition of the menus is regularly checked by parents and professionals. The topic of nutrition plays a special role in our day care centre and is therefore explained in more detail in a separate catering concept.
Our meal times are as follows:

• Breakfast until 9:30 a.m.
• Lunch between 11:15 a.m. and 12:00 p.m.
• Snack from 14:00

• 10.79 approved professional staff positions, including leadership leave
• 1 annual trainee
• 1 trainee
• 1 trainee in voluntary social year
• 2 housekeeping staff
• 2 cleaning staff
• 1 caretaker

In addition, school interns are in the house throughout the year. We see the guidance and support of these interns as a welcome enrichment of our daily pedagogical routine, as well as an important core task in order to optimally (co-)train future professionals during their education.

The affiliation to the home group and its staff form an important basis for the child to feel safe and integrated in the facility.
The core group creates a structured framework through recurring rituals that only take place in the group (breakfast, conversation and singing circle, setting the table, lunch, snack, etc.). This enables the child to experience itself in a safe environment. Through integration into daily tasks, the child can develop a sense of belonging and test its self-efficacy.
In the course of its further development, the child can draw ever larger circles and increasingly explore the diverse educational places according to individual needs.
The adjoining room belonging to the group is adapted to the children's topics on the basis of observations and designed together with the children. During lunchtime, the adjoining room is converted into a sleeping and resting room.

In the entire hallway, the children have the opportunity to engage in various play opportunities across the groups. These include the role play area, which is regularly designed according to the needs and interests of the children, and the various movement toys, which encourage the children's natural urge to move.
In role play, the children can re-enact situations they have experienced in order to better understand and process their own life situation. In their interaction with the other children, they practise their linguistic, social, emotional and cooperative skills.
In addition, there are regular opportunities for singing together in the hallway.

Various materials are available to the children for free design, which they can use according to their own ideas.
At the workbench, the children are familiarised with different tools and how to handle them. This is where they make their first experiences with construction and technology. A unique feature of our day care centre is the work with wood and tools.

In the studio, the children try out different techniques of art and creativity. It should be noted that it is not about the product, but about the process of creating, as well as living out and developing the imagination and sensory experience.

The gym is available to the children every day. The children can intensively develop their sensory experiences and their motor development at the movement building sites and play situations, some of which they have designed themselves.

With various construction materials in the building areas, the children create their own imaginary structures. Here they gain their first experiences with mathematics, physics and technology, which form the basis for later understanding.

On the one hand, the library can serve as a place of rest in a relaxed atmosphere, where the children experience security and safety.
On the other hand, there is a large selection of picture and non-fiction books that the children can choose according to their themes and feelings. They have the opportunity to leaf through them independently, to introduce the books to each other or to have the books read to them by adults (dialogue reading).
In addition, they make their first experiences with written language and can practise writing at the painting table.

Our crèche garden and our large outdoor area are available to the children all year round. By arrangement, they can use the garden in small groups or independently on their own.
Experiences of nature are gained through daily play outside in all seasons and weather. In the process, the various natural phenomena can be observed. The children take responsibility and experience the conscious handling of their environment also through our kitchen garden.
Various movement experiences and role play take up a lot of space in the outdoor area. Huts and hidden niches offer the children retreat corners.
Children experience movement throughout the entire grounds.

The professionals offer the children additional projects and workshops that are limited in time and space. These include the music workshop, visits to the neighbouring fort, singing circles with the children from all groups, baking, experimenting (Nawi workshop), gymnastics in the university gymnasium and much more.

Development goes from the inside to the outside, from the near to the far. Children should move on foot in order to be able to make their own independent and self-determined experiences along the way. In this process, individual development determines the achievable distance, the path is the goal.
On this basis, the children conquer their environment. The first excursions therefore take place in the immediate vicinity of the day care centre, perhaps the youngest children manage the way from the day care centre to the university or the fort and explore the grounds there. The older and more mobile the children become, the further the excursions can take them, down the campus hill, to the market on Messplatz or through the fort to the hospital. Developmentally, the excursions take the children further and further, until finally, in the last year before school, they explore entire city districts - also by bus.

For children as well as for parents, the transition to a childcare facility is a far-reaching step. All sides have to go through a process of detachment. For the parents, this means that they have to entrust their child to people they have never met before.
The acclimatisation process at the Villa Unibunt day care centre is based on the Berlin Model. The initial focus is on building up the bond and relationship between the child and the responsible specialist, the so-called transition companion.
The positive support of the accompanying family person is a key element in this process. The aim is to create a basis of trust between all those involved, on which the child's attachment to the transition companion can grow.
A positive settling-in phase is a decisive step towards the child's independence. The settling-in period depends on the individual life situation of the child on the one hand, and on the development within the day care centre on the other hand, and can last several weeks.

This change affects all children who are admitted to one of the mini-groups (red/yellow) and remain in the facility beyond the age of four. At around the age of 3, children move up to the mixed-age groups. Before the change, a "transition meeting" takes place between the specialist of the mini-group, the specialist of the future maxi-group and the parents of the child. The content of the discussion is both an exchange about the child's development so far as well as information about the upcoming changes and the new framework conditions of the future group. The transition is organised individually with each child.

The transition from nursery to primary school is a crucial interface for children. The aim must be that the children, taking into account their individual resources and deficits, have elementary knowledge and skills that form the basis for work in primary school. This includes sufficient language skills as well as so-called key skills such as perseverance, completing a task" [/F].
Source: Ministry for Integration 2014

In the Villa Unibunt day care centre, the future school beginners form their own group in the last year of the day care centre to gain experience for the start of school. The focus is on successful orientation in the social space of the city of Landau, as well as planning and organising excursions in this living environment on their own responsibility. In this way, they train key skills such as self-efficacy, self-confidence, personal responsibility and orientation skills. They practice their social and emotional competences, conflict skills and frustration tolerance again and again in the everyday life of the group. Another aspect of the pre-school work is the regular school workshop. In the school workshop, the children deal with various school materials and try out, among other things, particularly demanding play materials that challenge their cognitive abilities. With this weekly role play "Playing School", they playfully acquire their first skills for school.
We cooperate with the Horstring School, which we are allowed to visit and inspect.

The daycare time ends with the ritual of a special evening planned by the children, when they have the daycare "to themselves" and can prove their courage and confidence on a night hike.

The parents' committee is elected at the annual parents' meeting and represents the parents' interests vis-à-vis the day care centre. At Villa Unibunt, the committee has a very high status and is consulted on many matters. The committee mediates between the interests of the different families and advises the day care centre on the implementation of the educational partnership.

The day-care centre advisory board is made up of the provider, the management, the pedagogical staff and members of the parents' committee. At the annual meeting, the advisory board decides on recommendations for important decisions, taking into account the children's perspectives gained in everyday life in the areas of education, training and care work.

Our weekly team meetings take place every Tuesday. In these meetings, the team discusses upcoming changes, special challenges from the groups and upcoming events that affect the day-to-day life of the day care centre.
The individual groups (Mini and Maxi) have the opportunity to come together in small teams during childcare hours to discuss and plan important events for the week.
Throughout the year, our nursery offers many activities for parents and children, such as parents' evenings (first day at school, parents' committee election, theme-specific evenings), parents' afternoons (get-to-know-you café, lantern craft) and festivals (summer festival, lantern parade). These events are planned, prepared and carried out by the team together with parents and children.

We are regularly supported by interns in training, e.g. interns in the voluntary social year, recognition interns, trainees in dual training, block internships, student internships and various job shadowing. The interns often give us an external view of our work and enable us to reflect and critically question our work.
As professionals, we attach great importance to regular further training in order to develop the quality of our work. Quality in discourse, first aid courses, fire protection training, safety training, "Kita est besser" (Kita eats better), situational approach, child welfare risk, hygiene training and a day of further training for the responsible body are just a few examples of how we have advanced the education of our staff.

We have written our own concepts for some topics. As some of these documents are very extensive, we do not want to integrate them directly into the concept. Nevertheless, these concepts are to be seen as a basis for our understanding of the pedagogical work and the togetherness in Villa Unibunt. The following concepts are available and can be explained in more detail upon request:

• Protection concept with complaint management for professionals, children and parents
• Quality management with process documentation for quality in discourse and quality manual of Villa Unibunt
• Framework hygiene plan
• Catering concept and process documentation for "Kita isst besser" ("Kita eats better")
• Situation in the environment of Villa Unibunt, a "lifeworld analysis".

All documents have been compiled by the professionals of the facility and are accessible at all times.

We see one of the foundations for the effectiveness of our action plan in transparent communication with parents. Thus, as a matter of principle, we try to maintain care for families with an urgent need. To this end, all families are informed of the emergency situation and asked to organise alternative care if possible. In the past, this has often made it possible to provide care without restrictions.

In principle, the following regulation applies in the event of staff absences in order to be able to guarantee the duty of supervision:

The minimum requirement is based on the individual care intensity of the child as well as on the staff situation in terms of competence/requirements. As a guideline, the stated full-time equivalents (FTEs) in the U2 area of 0.263 FTEs and in the Ü2 area of 0.1 FTEs per child apply. In summary, the minimum requirement consists of the variables:

• Individual child care intensity,
• Competence/requirement of/for the pedagogical specialist,
• FTE in the U2 and Ü2 area.

In addition, the opening hours of the Kita must be observed. Likewise, the legally required break after six hours of work must be made possible for every employee. Otherwise, the Kita must be partially or completely closed. At least two educational specialists must be present in the day care centre in order to be able to admit children in general.

In justified exceptional cases, this can be deviated from; this applies above all to covering the marginal times (early and late service). In these cases, a specialist in assistance (1) can provide support. This assistant must be suitable for this exceptional case (the suitability is checked by the kindergarten management).

The number of children admitted is determined individually on the basis of the rule described above. Temporary staff who do not fulfil the criteria of a qualified assistant do not count as a qualified assistant and are therefore excluded from the regulation! An exceptional case only applies to short periods of time.

In order not to overburden the day care centre staff in the long term, the regulation must not be maintained in the long term. It is important to bear in mind that assistants cannot be responsible for the pedagogical part with regard to e.g. documentation, parent talks, offers, settling in, overall view of the group, etc. The assistants act as a supplement to the nursery staff in order not to overburden the nursery staff in the long term. The assistants act as a supplement. They have a supplementary character and support the daily routine, especially in care and nursing.

During a very high staff shortage, it can also come to the closure of individual groups or the complete closure of the facility. In the case of foreseeable and unforeseeable absences, temporary staff can be brought in as support. The work of our housekeepers is also part of the quality work in a day care centre. In the event of their absence, they are also to be replaced by our qualified staff.
If no temporary help is available, it is possible to ask for support in the other day care centres of the Studierendenwerk Vorderpfalz.

to (1): Specialist in assistance is: educators without professional experience, social assistants, educational assistants with a state examination, child care workers with state recognition, curative education assistants after completing their training, professional trainees in their final year of training, dual trainees who have completed their school education and need to work off the remaining time.

Emergency situations are assessed on a case-by-case basis before appropriate steps are taken. The absence of a specialist is compensated for by internal arrangements regarding early and late duty, changes in break arrangements and/or swapping of duty times. In addition, the ratio of registered children to the professionals present must always be assessed.

We divide emergency situations into three levels, which are usually manifested by the absence of two, three or four (and more) professionals

An emergency group must be formed as soon as supervision in several groups is no longer guaranteed due to a lack of staff. The number of children in the emergency group is based on the minimum requirements described above and is variable. Criteria for the selection of children are presented below.

1. both parents (2 points) ...

• a. ... work full time (without the possibility of home office)
• b. ... are studying and working (without the possibility of a home office)

2. one parent (1 point) ...

• a. ... works in presence
• b. ... works in home office
• c. ... studies in presence
• d. ... is a single parent and studies / is employed

3. pre-school child or child with special care needs (1 point)

A sum score (a sum score is the sum of the values of the criteria of the emergency group) is formed from the criteria and decides which children are given priority if there are too many applications. In addition to this sum score, the registration time of the need counts; i.e. at what time the notification of need arrived at the day care centre (preferably by E-MAIL, in exceptional cases also possible by telephone).

• Use of external substitutes
• Team arrangements for early and late services
• Exchange of duty times
• Use of preparation times for care services
• Agreements on overtime
• Merging of groups with reduced number of children
• Modification, postponement or cancellation of planned projects and plans

The measures according to Level I are fully utilised, in addition:

• Cancellation of further training
• Faculty on leave are requested
• Ban on new holidays
• Parents are asked to look after children at home if possible or at least to pick them up as early as possible
• Postponement of familiarisation sessions
• Shortening of opening hours for individual groups
• Promoters, Youth Welfare Office and State Youth Welfare Office are informed

All measures of levels I and II are exhausted, additionally

• Shortening of opening and care hours
• Stop of settling in
• Closure of groups, establishment of emergency care
• Temporary closure of the facility

All measures are agreed and implemented transparently (team, parents, parents' committee, provider, youth welfare office, state youth welfare office) in accordance with existing laws, regulations and rules.

• Agreement by telephone with the responsible body (Mr. Schmitt: 06341/ 9179190 or Mr. Spieß 06341 / 9179191)
• Information to parents
• Information to the responsible youth welfare office and state youth welfare office