Should there be an integrated childcare workforce with playwork and early years workers linked through a common qualification or joint standards? How far the two should come together is an issue being hotly debated within the childcare profession.
The DfES has funded the SkillsActive Playwork Unit to manage a project, due to finish in October, of joint work with the early years sector to investigate whether there is commonality between the occupational standards of the two sectors. Sue Hook, SkillsActive national development officer (quality assurance), who is working on the project, says focus groups have found commonalities between the two sectors including working in teams, administrative systems and Ofsted inspections. Differences occur in their approach to play and the fact that early years workers deliver the Foundation Stage, where playworkers do not.
Unique principles
Paul Bonel, unit director playwork at SkillsActive, believes there are many similarities but also warns 'there are lots of bridges to be built'. He adds, 'There is some anxiety with playworkers, because the values of the sector are held dearly.'
Play specialist Philip Walters says, 'Playwork has a set of principles, of values and assumptions which have been in existence for ten years. Play Wales has just put out a review of these - the proposals make sure it stays the playwork sector and protect the idea of play as a natural drive for children. It is felt that joining up with early years childcare could take that element away.'
Stephen Rennie, senior lecturer in play and playwork at Leeds Metropolitan University, questions whether joining playwork and early years is just the latest fad.
He says, 'Playwork has things in common with a vast range of other professions. The fashion at the moment is to say childcare, but it has not always been so. In the early 1970s playwork was linked with youth work, in the late 1970s and early 1980s with community work, and in the early 1960s with landscape architecture, because the early playworkers were in that field.'
He believes that playwork and early years childcare only look similar on the surface. 'A key and insurmountable difference is that in childcare the customer is the parent, because they engage in childcare on behalf of the principle carer of children. In playwork the customer is the child, because there is an agreement that we start where the child is and proceed in the direction the child establishes.
'There are playworkers who take care of children, and childcarers who apply playwork principles and practices in the course of their work. But this does not mean they are the same.'
Meynell Walter, of Meynell Games, a national playwork organisation aimed at creating better play opportunities, is adamant that playwork is a unique profession and should remain separate. 'I am vehemently opposed to a common core, because the value base is different,' he says.
'In early years settings the focus is on everyone getting on with each other, but in playwork it is sometimes not about that. The adult role in play settings is to intervene rarely. We are there as a resource, not a referee.
'Playworkers provide opportunities to play and the children choose what they do, how they do it and when they do it. There is no extrinsic purpose - whereas early years workers give options and focus on an adult agenda.'
But Paul Bonel points out, 'If a child-centred approach is taken as a starting point, then there are a lot of commonalities. Early years carers facilitate children to learn through play opportunities - they could be doing the same in a breakfast club, after school club, pre-school or adventure playground. The starting point is the children themselves and where they naturally want to go and the adult role in all these settings is to guide and facilitate the process.'
The need for more integrated children's services is highlighted in the Children Bill unveiled by the Government last month. And the organisation 4Children, formerly the Kids' Clubs Network, has called for a new children's profession, based on a common set of principles and practice for all who work with children. Chief executive Anne Longfield maintains that 97 per cent of people who work with children accept that they have the same starting points and principles.
'There are specialisms and unique areas. However, for too long there have been different professionals seeing the same children and saying different things,' she says. 'We need to look at the common needs and leave room for specialisms.
'If we don't come together we run the risk of the workforce being started from scratch. There is no need, because all the good practice is already out there. We need to build robust bridges where there is one route and one career map.'
Ms Longfield adds, 'It is important that children can get access to joined- up services that meet their needs, rather than flit between different services at different times. They could go to study support in school and be labelled as pupils, then go to a childcare scheme and be looked after, and in a leisure centre be treated in a different way, but doing the same sort of activities in each place.'
Peter Moss, professor of early childhood provision at the University of London's Institute of Education, suggests possible models for an integrated workforce beyond the early years - the pedagogues in Denmark whose services cover from birth to pensioners, and the new Swedish model integrating early years workers and free-time workers into one training framework for children aged 0 to 19.
'The question of the future of children's services and workforce with the introduction of the Green Paper questions whether there should be a new profession,' he says. 'If we are serious about a more integrated approach, we need to create a cross-sectoral occupation that brings the existing workforce into one framework so everyone speaks the same language. The small problem, is who would pay?'
New approach
The DfES Children's Workforce Unit, SkillsActive and the National Day Nurseries Association are currently working toward joining up an approach to training for those working with children. The aim is to make moving between jobs easier by producing transitional modules for playworkers wanting to work in the early years, or early years workers who would like to go into playwork. There would also be support for 'portfolio workers'
involved in a number of different jobs with more than one age range.
It is anticipated that the new awards will be available from spring 2005, but it is not yet known whether the transitional modules will form stand-alone qualifications or be certificated as continuing professional development.
As Paul Bonel at SkillsActive says, 'Many people work with children across the age ranges. We have to find a way where they do not have to do a whole set of training qualifications.'
Integrated service
Miranda Walker, a playwork trainer who owns Playtime Out of School Club and ABC Day Nursery in Cullompton, Devon, sees at first hand the need for training to allow skilled workers to move more easily between the sectors.
'Workers from the nursery sometimes go to help out at the after- school club, and we observe that even the more qualified and experienced staff tend to be too hands-on with the children in the club. They find it difficult to sit back and let the children do it their own way,' she says.
'Ofsted accept staff with a childcare qualification to work in the club as trained staff. They do not have to be qualified playworkers. But we find that it does not work well, so we encourage all our staff to do at least a level 2 qualification in playwork as well.'
She adds, 'Many out-of-school clubs are opened by people who already own a nursery. If workers are multi-skilled in early years childcare and playwork, it makes them attractive to more employers.'
Anne Longfield agrees. 'We have such high recruitment targets to meet that we need to look at ways to maximise the potential of those who want to work with children and encourage transferring of skills. We need to ensure that people working with children get the opportunity to develop their careers and work as a team across the needs of children.'
Sue Hook thinks the specialist roles of playworker and early years worker will continue to considered important following the development of the transitional modules. 'As long as we respect the different assumptions and values that underpin both sectors and understand there will be some people who just want to work in playwork and others who just want to work in early years, it will be fine,' she says.
'We need to keep both sets of occupational standards, because there will be people who just work with under-threes and don't need to know about working with 15-year-olds, and vice versa.'