Tip Of The Month #4 - Keeping Your Children Up To Date.
Each month we will be sharing some of our most useful tips with you. This month's tip is focusing on ways to ensure that your data is kept up-to-date!
Send Parents a Child Data Form
Did you know that you are able to run a Child Data Form Report? This report holds all of the data that you hold for each child. It can even be run blank so you can send it to new families for easy information collection. It's always a good idea to make sure you're up-to-date with things like allergies and dietary requirements for your children so why not send the form to everyone to make sure all of your information is correct?
The Child Data Form Report is found in the Reports menu in Abacus under the Children section. To Run the report blank, click on the tick box next to "Blank Data Form".
Click "Go".
Now that you have the blank Child Data Form Report, you can get it out to your parents! You could print the report and give it to the parents to fill in or you could save it and email it to them via Mail Merge
Requesting Changes on Parent Portal
Did you know that parents can request changes to their information via Parent Portal?
Parents can log in and request changes in the "Family" tab.
The Parent can then select either themselves or the child and click on "Request Changes".
From here, they can make any amendments that they want to their personal information.
Once the changes are saved, you will be notified via email and you can go ahead and make any necessary amendments.
Create Additional Data Lists
Did you know that you can add new options to various drop-down lists throughout Abacus?
If there is an allergy, illness, dietary requirement etc that is not already on the list, you can easily add it on by heading to the Settings section and clicking on "Data Lists".
Here you will find a drop-down list of all the different lists in Abacus that can be amended. Click on the list that you are looking to add to, then click on the green plus button.
Once you have added the new item, click "Save" and you will now see that this new item is on the list elsewhere on the system.
For a detailed guide on adding Data Lists, click here.
Adding Doctors, Health Visitors and Lead Professionals
Did you know that you can list Doctors, Health Visitors and Lead Professionals as carers to Abacus?
In the Families Section, find the family that you are looking to add to and click on "Add/Pick Carer". From here, just fill in the details of the person that you are adding taking care to put Doctor, Health Visitor or Lead Professional in the "Relationship to child" field.
Did you know that carers are colour coded depending on their relationship to the child?
- Purple - Primary Carer
- Red - Emergency Contact
- Green - Doctor
- Yellow - Health Visitor
- Orange - Lead Professional
- Grey - Anyone Else
Once one of these secondary carers has been added, you won't need to enter their details again. For example, if a Doctor is the doctor of multiple children at the setting, just click on "Add/Pick Carer" but this time select "Pick" and choose the doctor from the list.
Did you know that there is a Lead Professional Report? that shows which families are connected to which Lead Professional. This report can be found in the Reports section, under "General".
Recording and Reporting Accidents and Incidents
Did you know that you can record Accidents and Incidents on Abacus?
In the Children section, click on "Misc. Details" over on the right-hand side. From the drop-down list, select "Accidents and Incidents".
To record a new accident/incident, click on the green plus button.
Fill in all of the details of the event - Which staff members were involved, where it took place, what time it was and so on. You can also add attachments to this section so if you have a separate incident form at your setting, you can attach it here to keep them together.
You can also generate a report for Accidents and Incidents via the Report Menu. You will find the Accidents and Incidents Report in the Children section.
This report can by run using many different filters, you can select child age groups, staff members involved or places that accidents/incidents have occurred. This report is a great way for you to assess where accidents are happening and help you make your setting a safer place.
If your report shows you that lot's of accidents are happing with a particular member of staff then perhaps they will need a bit more health and safety training or if there are many accidents happening in a particular place then we need to look at what we can do to minimize these accidents!
For a detailed guide on adding accidents and incidents, click here!
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