Our Lady's Nursery was set up in 1971 to meet the huge demand in Ballymun for HSE childcare referrals. The nursery fits into the HSE child protection and welfare plans for this area as all children attending the service come from families referred to the service by Public Health Nurses and Social Workers. The nursery originally operated from an old HSE prefab building located on Sillogue Avenue in Ballymun and the service continued to run from this building till 2012. In September 2011 Our Lady’s Nursery was approved a grant to build a purpose built childcare facility, which opened in September 2012. The new building consists of 5 preschool rooms, a baby room and toddler room, fully fitted kitchen and dining area for the children, outdoor and roof play areas, Sensory room and Speech Therapy room. Currently there are 112 children attending the nursery aged from 6 months to school age. Parents using the Nursery all come from the Ballymun catchment area. 100% of our children are referrals from the various Public Health Nurse's in the area, Social Work Department and Family Support Workers. We currently have a waiting list for September 2018 with a high number of children listed as HSE/Tusla high priority children. We implement the HighScope curriculum in Our Lady’s Nursery. All of our staff are HighScope trained. A very definite objective of the nursery is to foster children’s exploration for learning in both small group sessions and in large group sessions. Through the HighScope curriculum we are equipping the child with life skills. We aim to involve the parent’s in their child’s achievements in the nursery and to give parents an awareness of their child’s future education. Through the HighScope model the nursery aims to develop the child’s ability to think for themselves, to manage conflict and to plan their day in an appropriate manner, to learn the basic social skills that are sometimes lacking in their own home environment. We encourage parents to be involved in this process. HighScope is based on adult-child interactions where the adult lets the child lead the play and becomes part of the child's play rather than leading the activity.