A chance comment about ‘compassion fatigue’ led Angela Hodgkins, senior lecturer at the University of Worcester, to research the emotional impact of working in the early years. Here she sets out her findings

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The emotional toll taken by working in the early years, while not new, has come to prominence following the Early Years Alliance making a hot topic of it last year. Their survey found that one in four early years practitioners is considering leaving the profession due to stress.

In 2016, I carried out a small study in a local nursery about the use of empathy in the profession. When discussing advanced empathy (see box) in a focus group, one of the practitioners said, ‘Having this kind of intense emotional connection with children can be tiring and leads to compassion fatigue.’ This got me thinking. In a Nursery Worldarticle in 2013, Geoff Taggart describes compassion fatigue within the early years as arising from ‘the daily experience of alleviating the suffering and dependency of others’. Perhaps having a close emotional bond with the children we work with leads to self-sacrifice, rather than job satisfaction.

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