Analyse the issues which are essential to confidentiality and objective observation.

records and carrying out observations on children allow early years practitioners to pass accurate information on to parents. It means that parents can be kept informed of a child’s progress which shows them that their child is being seen as an individual and that the staff really know and understand their child” (Beith and Tassoni (2002, page 16+17) this is important as the observation shows the child’s development stage, each observation shows how much the child has improved so it is important that you record every exactly as this would affect the stage the child is actually at.It’s also important that you remember the rights of the children and primary carers while doing any observation, according to Beith and Tassoni “It is important for anyone carrying out observations to remember that observations should be carried out only in the child’s best interest. This means that it is unethical to set up situations that might cause the child or his/her parents distress and that all information gained during the observation and subsequent evaluation should be treated in confidence” (Beith and Tassoni(2002, page 22) It’s also important that you don’t make assumption and to observe and record everything correctly and make sure that all you write about is what you have seen the child do and not any personal information that isn’t needed.   According to Beith and Tassoni “To make an observation or assessment as accurate as possible, we must be careful that any prejudices and stereotyped ideas we have about the child are stripped away” (Beith and Tassoni(2002, page 23)While doing any observations it’s important that you don’t make any judgment about the child, you must know what the purpose of the observation is. It’s also important that you share your observation results with the parents or carers of the child, it is also important that no other parents gain any information about other people’s children this is confidentially which is very important to remember when doing any observations , according to Beith and Tassoni “It is essential that children’s records are stored safely and that only parents, appropriate staff members and other professionals have access to them, this means that other parents should never be given information about other people’s children.” (Beith and Tassoni (2002,page 22) when doing observations you need to be well aware of the legal requirements of doing an observation, for example the EYFS, Every Child Matters, Data Protection Act 1998, according to Beith and Tassoni “The Data Protection Act came into force in March 2000 and replaced the previous act. Anyone processing personal data must comply with the eight enforceable principles of good practice” (Beith and Tassoni(2002, page 20), Some of these eight enforceable principles include, “the information must be fairly and forcefully processed, processed for limited purposes, accurate, not kept longer than necessary, processed in accordance with data subjects’ rights, secure, not transferable to countries with adequate protections and adequate, relevant and not excessive.” (Beith and Tassoni(2002, page 20+21).  And the Children’s Act 2004, this is so you don’t break any laws and include these requirements while completing the observations.As part of doing observations confidentiality is one of the mean focus’s you need to keep an eye out for, you need to make sure the information that you have observed is kept locked away in a safe place with only the staff that it concerns having access to it, this is so the child’s observation doesn’t go missing but also that nobody can take the observation which could put the child in danger of being harmed, for example if someone takes the child’s observation they could get access to the child. According to Beith and Tassoni “Confidentiality is an extremely important issue when keeping records on children. The records can be used only in the child’s best interest and any information gained by the early years practitioners is confidential” (Beith and Tassoni (2002, page 22)While doing an observation you also need to ensure that you follow all the policies and procedures according to Beith and Tassoni “It is important that all early years practitioners understand what their setting’s policy says. It is usual for early years settings to tell parents that their child’s progress will be monitored and then gain permission from them to keep records about the child”(Beith and Tassoni (2002, page 21), it important that before doing any observations you must gain permission of the parents to keep records of their child, also before planning an observation you need permission of the supervisor, according to Beith and Tassoni “It is a good idea to ask your supervisor well in advance, usually the day before. This allows the setting to make sure that you are not included in any of their activity plans for the session when you hope to carry out the observation.” (Beith and Tassoni (2002, page 36+37). For example the safe guarding policy, if anytime during doing an observation you notice a bruise or any unexplained feature that you don’t know about, instead of hesitating straight away and immediately reacting yourself then you need to inform the manager or first aider that you have seen the unexplained bruise and then leave it to the manager to deal with.