Each child in a group setting must be assigned a key person. In childminder settings the childminder is the key person. A key person has special responsibilities for working with a small number of children, giving them the reassurance to feel safe and cared for and building relationships with their parents.' So says Practice Guidance for the Early Years Foundation Stage, p15, 3.4.
All this sounds like good common sense, but what does it mean in practice? And how can settings make sure that their key persons approach is built on sound understanding of the importance of attachments and a real commitment to developing positive relationships with children and their families?
Key person
'Key person' was the term used by Elinor Goldschmied and Sonia Jackson (People Under Three - Young children in daycare, 1994) to describe pioneering work in nurseries that attempted to provide children with 'a person to whom they can relate in a special way' (p37).
It is the particular nature and warmth of the relationship that marks the difference between a key person and a 'key worker', whose main responsibilities are usually administrative and across multiple agencies.
Each practitioner has a small group of children allocated to them, so that they can pay particular attention to the emotional and physical well-being of those children.
Key person approach
The term 'key person approach' is described in Key Persons in the Nursery (Peter Elfer, Elinor Goldschmeid, Dorothy Selleck, 2003) as an organisational method that ensures every child has 'one or two adults in the nursery, (who) while never taking over from the parents, connect with what parents would ordinarily do: being special for the children, helping them manage throughout the day, thinking about them too - all of which help a child to make a strong link between home and nursery'.
Having a second person as 'back-up' is important, as it is impossible to guarantee the availability of the key person at all times.
Paired and shared key caring
Sally Thomas (Nurturing Babies and Children Under Four) suggests using the term 'key caring' because it focuses on the relationship, rather than the role of the practitioner.
She advocates 'paired and shared key caring' as a way of ensuring the very best attentive and nurturing care throughout a child's time in a setting. This partnership would ideally see an experienced practitioner matched with someone with less experience and the two would share the 'key caring' and remain the key people until the child left the setting.
This key caring role means that the same adults take responsibility for the elements of a child's day that have the most impact on their emotional well-being. These include:
- home visits and establishing good relationships with parents and families
- handovers and transitions - greeting and settling children on arrival/farewells and smooth handovers at the end of sessions
- personal care routines - meal times, nappy changing, toileting, rest times.
Well-being and development
Without a key persons approach, a child is likely to be 'handled' by any number of staff during a session and over their time in the setting.
If you have ever been in hospital, totally dependent on others for your care, you will probably know how stressful it is to be attended to by a range of different people, with no continuity of care or attention. Think how much worse that must be for a baby.
Elinor Goldschmied urged us to never forget that 'a child, and particularly a young and almost totally dependent one, is the only person in the nursery who cannot understand why he is there. He can only explain it as abandonment, and unless he is helped in a positive and affectionate way, this will mean levels of anxiety greater than he can tolerate' (People Under Three, p37).
This is why the key persons approach isn't just about reducing the number of 'handlers' a child experiences. Care routines, in particular, provide special times for key adults to relate to children in playful, affectionate ways that help build the secure attachments essential for children's well-being and brain development.
As the relationship grows, the child's key people are better able to 'tune in' to their needs, their moods and enthusiasms and provide the intuitively nurturing responses that are essential if a child is to feel safe and secure.
This doesn't mean, however, that a child is restricted to being just with either of their key people and the other children in their care. Feeling safe enough to explore and interact with others in the setting is very important, and more easily achieved when a child knows the security of being 'held in mind' by their key people.
Secondary attachment
This 'tuned in' relationship mimics in many ways the bonds of attachment that children have in their families. However, it is essential to stress that in no way does it undermine the primary attachment a child has with a parent. It forms one of the several secondary attachments that a child needs to be able to thrive and cope when away from home.
Challenges and implementation
Often the objections to the key persons aproach focus on ways in which it is considered unrealistic, in terms of practitioner time and availability.
A true key caring approach, however, doesn't attempt to achieve the impossible task of having one adult constantly available to the child. It seeks to minimise the amount of needlessly stressful situations that a child is exposed to.
It cannot be denied that an approach that depends on quality relationships isn't easy to implement. Because it is an 'approach', rather than just an operational system, it isn't simply a matter of assigning groups of children to practitioners and managing rotas for care routines.
A huge amount of discussion and planning needs to take place before such an approach can get underway. Just as importantly, the discussion needs to continue over time, as the players in the key person triangle - the children, their parents and the practitioners - overcome the challenges and build the relationships that bring benefits for everyone.
Part 2 of this series will appear in Nursery World on 10 April References and further reading:
- Sally Thomas (Feb 2008) Nurturing Babies and Children Under Four (DVD and resource pack). Heinemann
- Peter Elfer, Elinor Goldschmied, Dorothy Selleck (2003) Key Persons in the Nursery: Building Relationships for Quality Provision. David Fulton
- Elinor Goldschmied and Sonia Jackson (1994) People Under Three - Young children in daycare. Routledge
- 'Being Held in Another's Mind' by Jeree Pawl, www.wested.org/online_pubs/ccfs-06-01-chapter1.pdf
- Birth to Three Really Matters, developed by Redcar and Cleveland Local Authority. Featherstone Education, www.featherstone.uk.com
- 'The roles and responsibilities of the key person: developing an effective key person system in early years settings', with Jane Slater, is being run at the Institute of Education, London, on Friday 9 May 2008. Visit: http://ioewebserver.ioe.ac.uk/ioe/cms/get.asp?cid=882&882_1=17304
LINKS TO EYFS GUIDANCE
- UC 1.1 Child Development
- PR 2.4 Key Person
- L&D 4.2 Active Learning
- EE 3.2 Supporting Every Child.