Practitioners around the country should by now be getting to grips with Birth To Three Matters, the under-threes framework funded by the Sure Start Unit and distributed free to childminders and daycare providers.
The guide has been produced to help early years practitioners become more aware of their role in meeting the developmental needs of babies and toddlers, improve their knowledge and practice and encourage them to be more reflective about what they do and how they respond to children.
Publication of the pack highlights the increasing focus on meeting the diverse needs of children under three, particularly as more and more of them are left in the care of childminders and day nurseries.
What is important is that childcare providers and Early Years Development and Childcare Partnerships do not see the pack as an end in itself, but as a starting point for further staff training, improved practice and working more effectively with parents.
The guide is in tune with the philosophy of both the national standards for daycare and childminding and the Foundation Stage curriculum. As there is no intention to make the guidance package a statutory requirement for national implementation, nursery managers can make their own plans about how to use the guide with their staff and with parents.
The package
The guide comes in the form of a box containing information cards, a poster, a video and a CD-Rom, all of which can be used in training sessions.
Video Use the video as a way to stimulate discussion about purposeful learning, and the environment and resources that you currently provide for this age range.
Poster Use the poster as a quick reference to view the various aspects of development during training sessions.
CD-Rom Use the CD Rom to bring staff up to date with current educational, medical and psychological research and to train them in simple methods of observation and assessment of children's progress. Let staff take the CD-Rom home, so that they can pinpoint the information that they require for course assignments and programme planning.
Cards The cards are readily accessible and easy to comprehend and will be invaluable for planning your programme and in training sessions on child development and how to assess children's progress.
Planning and training
Use the guidance package during planning sessions when staff members discuss children's development, and work out what can be done to support their progress.
Suggestions made on the cards and on the CD-Rom will inspire new ways of working by reminding staff about interesting resources and activities that can develop good learning experiences for children. Support your staff to use their initiative in planning an environment and a programme that inspires children's innate curiosity.
Alternatively, as part of ongoing training, focus on one just element of the aspects of development in turn. In-house training of this kind allows you to use everyone's ideas and to implement those that work well for your setting.
For example, initiate discussion about how infants learn to communicate in your setting. Does your practice make best use of resources and daily routines to develop children's skills in listening and speaking? For instance, when children's nappies are changed, are they engaged in conversation and is the visual stimulus changed frequently to provide on-going interest and talking points?
Implement some of the ideas in the guidance package to extend the periods of adult-child interactions. Examine whether your keyworker system operates effectively to support children; and if it does not, you may need to ensure that babies and young children can relate to familiar members of staff on whom they can depend for security and comfort.
Parents
* Use the poster as a good prompt for explaining the philosophy of the guide to parents.
* Laminate it, pin it to the parents' noticeboard, refer to it when parents visit the nursery and cite it when you describe how you care for babies and young children.
* Circulate copies of the guidance notes for parents to read at home so they too can benefit. Ultimately, sharing good practice will ensure that children receive more consistent handling and higher levels of interaction.
* Organise sessions with parents to explain and discuss aspects of child development.
EYDCP training
The guidance package offers Early Years Development and Childcare Partnership training managers new opportunities to direct training at partnership members who may feel that they have been less well served with courses until now.
Childminders
Provide training for childminders to help them understand the pack and support them to use it according to children's individual needs. For many, the pack will reaffirm the good practice they have already developed; for others it will give them the confidence to try new ways of working.
Emphasise the importance of childminders sharing the pack with parents to reflect on children's developmental stages and the crucial impact of adult interaction on growth.
Daycare settings
Provide a training programme that seeks to explore each of the aspects of development. Demonstrate to practitioners how they can offer children challenges, risks, enjoyment and the ability to learn from engaging in first-hand experiences.
The challenge for the adult is to tune into the individual needs of each child, to identify their particular stage of development, and to capitalise on the learning potential of every planned and routine activity.
The opportunity to meet practitioners from different settings in a centralised training programme in the local area will promote enthusiasm and encourage everyone to review and refine their day-to-day practice with young children.
Further information
* Birth to Three Matters is available free from DfES publications on 0845 6022260.
A series of articles by Professor Lesley Abbott, director of Birth to Three Matters, and Ann Langston, a project team member involved in developing Birth to Three Matters, have appeared in Nursery World on 12 December 2002, 27 February 2003, 27 March 2003, 24 April 2003 and 22 May 2003.