Your questions answered after launch

Find out more about the steps needed to gain Millie's Mark, the voluntary ‘gold standard’ award created in recognition of early years childcare providers that train all their staff in paediatric first aid and go above and beyond the minimum legal requirements.

The background to Millie’s Mark

In March 2015 The Department of Education tendered for the development, management, monitoring and promotion of a Quality Mark for paediatric first aid excellence in nurseries. At the beginning of July 2016 Sam Gyimah, the Childcare Minister at that time, announced that the Department for Education had awarded National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) the contract to deliver a voluntary quality mark for nurseries.

During its development NDNA carried out a pilot to ensure the system and processes were robust and identified best practice. Millie’s Mark was then launched on 1 September 2016. 

Since the launch of Millie’s Mark there have been a number of questions.  Some settings are under the impression that the Mark will be awarded on simply having 100% of your staff team qualified.

Millie’s Mark is much more comprehensive than this. The Mark does require settings to have 100% of staff working directly with children qualified in paediatric first aid but also requires that the learning is kept alive and in the forefront of practitioners’ minds, so they are confident, ready and capable should an emergency occur.

The Accreditation Process for settings

When you sign up to Millie’s Mark you are signing up to a three to six month process of accreditation, lasting 3 years:

Step one

You are allocated a Millie’s Mark mentor, who is available to support you throughout the process.

Step two

With the support of your mentor you check your processes and procedures are up to the standard required through:

• A setting audit – this audit looks at your paediatric first aid processes and procedures.  The audit requires evidence of:
  • Staff deployment
  • Due diligence process
  • Staffing and ongoing paediatric first aid training during the Millie’s Mark three year cycle
  • Partnership with parents and external stakeholders
  • Documentation - policies and assessments and using these to inform improvement
• Staff confidence audit
• Staff training matrix
• Floor plan review.

Step three

If areas for improvement are identified, the mentor will work with you to develop an action plan to support improvement. 

Step four

When all the above steps are complete you upload the evidence to the Millie’s Mark website. An assessor is allocated when you have completed this and carries out a full online assessment and additional checks to ensure that you have met all the criteria for Millie’s Mark. 

Quality control

A percentage of settings that have been assessed online will be subject to a spot check assessment on site and notified the day before the visit. This method of assessment keeps costs to a minimum for settings while ensuring the quality and integrity of the assessment process.

Further Support

Throughout the six months, you can access your mentor to discuss any areas where you are unsure if you fully meet the criteria and evidence requirements. You can also access IT support from us. Where improvement has been identified the setting is required to implement actions. 

How long does it take to achieve Millie's Mark?

A minimum of three months to allow for any changes to be embedded and a maximum of six months. 

Why a paid for accreditation?

We know that even when staff have undertaken paediatric training, on occasions some are not confident in administering certain first aid procedures. It is only human  to feel less confident in certain situations, for example, some practitioners may find it difficult to deal with bleeding and feel quite unwell themselves when faced with this situation. 

The staff confidence audit helps you to identify staff strengths as well as fears and enables you to strategically deploy the most confident staff across the setting.

Final steps

To  manage quality of the assessment process, internal verification is carried out on all assessors to ensure the decision making process is standardised. A detailed summary on both assessment and internal verification is then reviewed by the Millie’s Mark Panel who ultimately decide from all the evidence submitted whether to award or if further information is required to fully meet the criteria. This panel is in place to maintain the quality and integrity of the process and maintain the standard of Millie’s Mark.

Settings awarded Millie’s Mark will be promoted on the Millie’s Mark website. Any setting that does not achieve the mark will not be publicised.