Each article will provide you with some important background information on policy, some real-life case studies and examples of principles into practice and a list of useful resources, and will also give you some questions to challenge your own understanding and practice.
The Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (May 2008, paragraph 1.11) states that:
Positive Relationships describes how children learn to be strong and independent from a base of loving and secure relationships with parents and/or a key person. The commitments are focused around respect; partnership with parents; supporting learning; and the role of the key person.
In this article we will be considering all of these aspects.
Respecting Each Other
For any setting to be considered inclusive, it needs to ensure that its practice is underpinned by the shared value of respect. Children, families and staff must demonstrate respect in their daily dealings with each other. This will mean listening to each other and understanding and empathising with the varied emotions that are felt in this kind of work and in busy family life. Everyone needs to feel valued for who they are and the contribution they make.
- How do you demonstrate that you value children, parents and staff?
Young children will need support in recognising and appropriately expressing their feelings. Staff and parents have a key role to play by providing children with good role models and by demonstrating the language to express the way they feel. Every child will respond differently so it is vital that they are each understood as individuals. Staff will need to make and record observations so that a detailed picture of each child's emotional development can be captured.
- How are parents enabled to contribute to the observational assessment of their child?
- How do you enable parents to quickly pass on information about their child's emotional state when arriving at the start of a session?
- How do you pass on information about the child's day if the child's key worker is not present?
As young children grow and develop so they will begin to form friendships with their peers and adults around them. It is important that children are encouraged to choose their own friendships, but be mindful of those children who are more reserved and who do not make friends easily - they may need some support and encouragement from the adults around them. Children learn so much from their friends and they can offer each other support.
'Every child is unique - in characteristics, interests, abilities and needs; and every child has the ability to enjoy his or her rights without discrimination of any kind.' (Thomas Hammarberg, 1997.) This quote was taken from a useful publication from the DCSF called Bullying involving children with special educational needs and disabilities: Safe to learn; Embedding anti-bullying work in schools.
Relationships between staff and parents should be built around open communication. Families should be listened to; after all they are the experts on their own child. Staff should be warm and welcoming to all parents whilst maintaining appropriate professional relationships. This can be difficult to establish because we all want to be liked. Remember, 'A smile is the universal welcome' (Max Eastman).
- Do you have guidelines to maintain appropriate professional relationships between staff and parents?
- Have you discussed 'who are we there for, the parent or the child?'
These types of discussions can help to establish professional protocols in what can often be blurry encounters.
Staff relationships are also important. Remember that the children will be observing you and modelling their own behaviours on what they see and hear you doing. Staff should be encouraged to share their strengths, skills and knowledge with each other, and disagreements should be aired and discussed in order to move forward.
Parents as Partners
All parents need emotional support when settling their child into a new setting. It is important to consider if any of your practices may discriminate against any of them.
Welcome signs can be made using parent's home languages; photographs of the children learning help to describe your practice; photographs of fathers in the setting show how you welcome their involvement; use the makaton sign for hello to welcome all the parents and the children. Never underestimate the importance of a welcoming face.
Ask the parents what their hopes and dreams are for their child while at your setting. Revisit these aspirations next time you meet to discuss their child's progress.
Parental involvement in a setting has long been recognised as an important factor in children's progress. Parents can also give great support and encouragement to one another (see case study).
Supporting Learning
It is the quality of adult interaction that has the most impact on children's learning. Sensitive observation and recording of individual children's development will aid planning for effective learning to take place, but individual interests of each child must be provided for. Children should be leading their own learning. The role of the adult is to know when it is the right moment to support or intervene in the learning, to teach new skills. We also need to provide the children with the language to describe their own learning needs, and we must ensure that the learning environment is supportive of individual children pursuing their own interests.
If communicating is difficult for the child, because of their age, stage of development or level of special need, then other systems should be considered, for example, signing or picture communication.
Most importantly, the children need to know that we care about them as individuals. If they feel supported and feel that they count, then they will be encouraged to learn.
Key Person
At Rowland Hill, each key person is responsible for a mixed age group of children from seven months to four years of age. As a team we are constantly evaluating our practice to check we are meeting the needs of all the children. It is demanding work both physically and emotionally and every key person has a team leader they can turn to for support. There are monthly one-to-one discussions and weekly team meetings which offer formal emotional support to the key person so that they can explore their emotions in relation to the children they care for. There is also an induction process which covers emotions at work, how to deal with conflict and team building. The team wrote the following advice for new staff:
Top tips for thriving at work
- Ask for help if you don't understand and ask again and again!
- Encourage and support one another
- Give feedback to others
- Make observations not assumptions
- Accept change is a constant and learn to love it
- Be proactive not reactive
- Take risks and see it as a challenge
- We are all human and make mistakes; own your mistakes and learn from
them
- Value yourself and what you contribute
- Enjoy your work and do your best
- Have a good work life balance.
As Peter Elfer and Katy Dearnley, 2007 write, 'It needs to be recognised that resources have to be allocated for the time and facilitation for staff to think about and process the individual feelings evoked by their emotional work with the children.'
Although it can be very difficult organisationally to build in this level of professional development for key person working, it is vital that formal support is offered because it will have a positive impact on the child's well being and development and also on staff recruitment and retention.
We have found that including all children together whatever their age encourages independence, benefits all age groups and provides continuity for families with the stability of a familiar key person. We constantly have to find creative solutions to the challenges that arise, such as using scissors, block play and baking. The answers always lie in the confidence and strength of the team to support one another and their in-depth knowledge of each individual child's interests and needs.
Theme Related Principle
Part 1 A Unique Child Every child is a competent learner from
(25/09) birth who can be resilient, capable,
confident and self-assured
Part 2 Positive Children learn to be strong and independent
(23/10) Relationships from a base of loving and secure
relationships with parents and/or a
key person
Part 3 Enabling The environment plays a key role in
(27/11) Environments supporting and extending children's
development and learning
Part 4 Learning and Children learn and develop in different ways
(18/12) Development and at different rates, and all areas of
learning and development are equally
important and interconnected
CASE STUDY: HARINGEY INCLUSION NETWORK
Susan Cole, a parent at Rowland Hill, describes her experience of developing a parent-led support group called the Haringey Inclusion Network. This group came about because Susan recognised the need for parents of children with disabilities to look to the future. 'I attended some training at the centre, it was a real turning point for me, they asked me what do you want for your daughter when she is 20? It really changed my perspective, they helped me to consider my daughter's long-term future, and it was fantastic.'
The aims of the group were:
- To be a bridge between parents and the local authority.
- To share information about what resources were available in the voluntary and state sector.
- To be advocates and to go to meetings together.
- To reach out to isolated families who were not receiving any support.
What worked well?
- Going to visit new schools with the support of another parent was invaluable.
- Inviting speakers to the group.
- Agreeing as a group the topics and workshops we wanted, for example relaxation sessions.
Susan's advice to settings thinking about establishing a 'parents for inclusion' support group:
1. Make sure that parents who are supporting other parents don't burn out. Offer to help the group with administrative work such as newsletters, but don't take over; remember it is a parent-led group.
2. Help the group access sources of funding, and allow them to manage the budget. Susan found being put in touch with other voluntary groups very useful. 'There is nothing worse than providing ordered in sandwiches that cost a fortune. Cooking our own food and sharing meals in a sociable way helped us to bond as a group. We could also make better use of the money!'
3. Don't expand too fast and make it clear that all the parents are together on an equal basis. Sometimes the group can be overwhelmed by the needs of one particular disability or syndrome.
4. Allow plenty of time at the start of the meeting for people to chat; it takes time to get people to talk about what is important to them.
5. Be conscious of cliques developing; make sure meetings are democratic and that notes from the previous meeting are available.
6. Invite adults with disabilities to talk about their lives. 'It's hard to see what your child's future could be like in the early years; sometimes you are still in denial, hearing from a disabled adult is very important.'
The future of the group:
The group is now considering its future as their children grow and secondary school looms. Susan recognises that the inclusion agenda is more widely recognised now. 'Establishing the group has been a huge learning experience for us all. I have made new friends, attended training and received loads of emotional support.'
REFERENCES
Elfer, Peter and Dearnley, Katy (2007), 'Nurseries and emotional well-being: evaluating an emotionally containing model of professional development' in Early Years 27-3, 267-279.
USEFUL WEBSITES
- Contact a Family www.cafamily.org.uk - a UK-wide charity providing advice, information and support to the parents of all disabled children. Information on working with families affected by a disability or health condition from pregnancy to pre-school.
- Excellent advice about how health professionals support parents with a pre-natal diagnosis of disability or health problem including information about the role of the health visitor and Early Support programme is available at http://www.cafamily.org.uk/pdfs/HealthSupportPack.pdf.
- Parent Know How, working together, supporting families DCSF - http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/parentknowhow/. Gives a list of 18 support services available to parents, offering telephone helplines, web and text support, online and published information.
- Parents for Inclusion http://www.parentsforinclusion.org/. Parents helping parents so their disabled children can learn, make friends and have a voice in ordinary schools and throughout life.
KEY POLICIES
- Working with Parents
- Key Person Policy
- Induction
- Planning and Assessment Policy
- Julie Vaggers is the part-time head of Rowland Hill Children's Centre and Nursery School in north London and a tutor, mentor and assessor on the National Professional Qualification in Integrated Centre Leadership (NPQICL) programme
- Dr Elaine Wilmot is an independent early years and education consultant specialising in inclusion and leadership development. She is the author of Personalising Learning in the Primary Classroom (Crown House Publishing)