From The Ground Up
How a nurse is using hard work and love to rebuild her early learning service.
BY BONNIE LAXTON-BLINKHORN, KINDICARE
Blessed By Bubs Early Learning Centre in Belmore, NSW is the brainchild and passion of clinical nurse consultant Tina Saleeb who bought the centre in March this year and has spent the last six months transforming it.
Tina works at St George Hospital three days per week and divides her time in that role between quality improvement and staff wellbeing. She has directly transferred this experience in healthcare into her new position as the owner of Blessed By Bubs and has put quality, gratitude and wellbeing at the heart of operations.
When Tina bought Blessed By Bubs, she knew she had a big job ahead of her, the service was operating with hardly any children and only a couple of staff members.
“We knew it would be a journey, but we worked hard and we worked fast and without closing the service we were able to renovate and rebrand. By April 2022 Blessed By Bubs was opened and we haven’t looked back.”
Tina’s husband, family therapist Kiro Saleeb is the ‘we’ she is referring to here, and Tina says Kiro had a huge role in the vision for Blessed By Bubs.
“Kiro spent years working in child protection with FACs and is now a child and family therapist for a not-for-profit community service. We often consult him regarding tricky matters and child wellbeing.”
Tours and more
While Tina has her eyes firmly forward, she admits the last few months haven’t been easy, she had the tough job of finding staff when there were none and the tougher job of convincing parents to choose her service when she was new to the industry.
“I believe people don’t just buy what you offer, they care about why you offer it, and this is what drives me. My focus is on loving, caring and nurturing children, families and staff and I want parents to be part of this journey when they enrol with us.”
To this end Tina has spent plenty of thinking about the parent experience when choosing a service and how she can share her vision.
“Parents can tell when a place feels right, they care more about how they feel and their relationship with educators rather than policies and procedures. I’ve spent lots of time on tours over the last few months as I think showing parents what we’re doing is the best way to help them understand what we offer and why we are different.”
Tours are an effective way to demonstrate the physical aspects of a service and to introduce parents to the educators, but Tina has also written a book The Blessed Fairy, which introduces parents and more importantly, children, to the service’s philosophical underpinnings.
The Blessed Fairy is handed out to parents as part of their enrolment pack and is the story of a fairy who thought the more she accumulated the happier she would be. When, one day, she realises that true joy comes from giving things away she embarks on a mission to give away as much as possible, and that’s when she finds her heart’s true happiness.
Tina says this simple message is at the core of her early learning service.
“If you put love in you get love back. At Blessed By Bubs, our joy comes from giving, every day we appreciate what the children in our community give us and this bottom-up approach is at the heart of everything we do here.”
Quality comes from within
Tina is currently preparing for her first assessment and rating and is using the same bottoms-up approach to ensure constant quality improvement at her service. This means her tightly knit team of educators are empowered to identify gaps in their service and suggest opportunities to rectify them.
“When we notice a problem, we first look to identify the cause of the problem, for example whether it is cultural, or because of resourcing, and then we work on solutions, we try things out, we measure the effectiveness and then we evaluate the impact.
“This process is ongoing and means my staff are truly vested in the quality improvement process and the outcomes.”
Tina divides her time between the hospital and Blessed By Bubs and as such relies on her carefully picked team to steer the ship in her absence, this includes a newly appointed centre director, who Tina says is the perfect fit and arrived right on time to help with their assessment and rating.
As a highly experienced nurse who has spent many years on the wards, Tina is well aware of the impacts of burnout and is doing everything in her power to safeguard the physical and mental wellbeing of her team.
“Small changes can make a huge difference when it comes to staff wellbeing and my team know I have their back. While I ask a lot in terms of their emotional commitment to the children, I work hard to keep them happy.”
Tina’s commitment to the children and staff in her service is unwavering and Blessed By Bubs is now at 70 per cent capacity, which proves that hard work pays off, especially when it is combined with love and gratitude.
We look forward to seeing how this wonderful service evolves and grows over the months ahead!
