Hello my name is Lorraine Duffy. My husband Paul and myself are Directors of Crystal Childcare. I qualified as an N.N.E.B Nursery Officer in 1988 and have twenty one years post qualification experience in a variety of settings including four years working for Lambeth Social Services. From the time I commenced college it was always my ambition to open my own nursery and this ambition was recognised in 1988 when we first opened Crystal Day Nursery.

Paul and I live in Kent with our four children Lara, Cole, Amber and Annaliese. Each of our eldest children attended Crystal Day Nursery before starting school.

My role within the company is extremely varied, I take responsibility for staff recruitment, co-ordinating the curriculum and nursery routines, policy formation and review, purchase of equipment and training and development of staff and supervising and supporting Nursery Managers. My experience as a childcare professional and as a parent enables me to actively support staff if they have particular concerns about meeting the needs of an individual child or family. It also means that I have lots of imagination and enthusiasm and this helps us as a company to move forward in our desire to provide high quality childcare.

As well as being N.N.E.B qualified, I have trained in a variety of areas including Child Protection, Story telling, Partnership with parents, working with challenging behaviour, direct work with abused children, Team building, Children Act training, Foundation Stage training, Bereavement Management, Anti Discriminatory practice, H.I.V, H.I.V. and Children, Disciplinary and grievance procedures, Recruitment and selection and The rights of working parents.

I am qualified to provide in service training in a number of areas and the part of my role that I particularly enjoy is helping staff to develop and expand their professional skills. We believe the key to providing high quality day care is to recognise and value the skills of your staff team and to continually motivate and stimulate the team. By providing training 'in-house' as well as utilizing other training providers we are able to maximise the potential of our staff team.