After becoming an approved NCFE training centre in January 2022, Apples and Honey Nightingale Education (AHE) has launched three Level 3 courses in Intergenerational Care and Education.
One is an award and the other course a certificate. The third, a diploma course, launches this September.
The first cohort of students that undertook the Level 3 award and the certificate have just graduated.
Judith Ish-Horowicz, AHN education and training ambassador and principal of Apples and Honey Nightingale, the first nursery in the UK to share the same site as a care home, told Nursery World, ‘To our knowledge, there are no other accredited qualifications in intergenerational practice in the UK, though there are other CPD accredited short courses in Scotland and Northern Ireland.’
The course aims to ensure that ‘knowledgeable and qualified’ practitioners will be able to roll-out intergenerational programmes across all settings, including early years, education, health and social care.
Ish-Horowicz said that after launching Apples and Honey Nightingale in 2017, which offers full daycare for children from three-months to five years in the grounds of Nightingale House, a residential Jewish care home in Clapham, south west London, she realised it is ‘crucial’ that intergenerational practice is integrated into the training package for outstanding care and education settings.
‘It needs to be included in the opportunities for career progression, as a position of responsibility and it needs to be delivered to a high standard so it's meaningful for all participants,’ she said.
The courses, delivered online, provide learners with a basic introduction of intergenerational practice through to a more detailed look at intergeneration care and education, with a unit on understanding dementia and age-related conditions.
- For more information on the courses click here
First Apples and Honey Nursery sold to London childcare provider
Meanwhile, Ish-Horowicz’s first nursery, Apples and Honey nursery, an ‘outstanding’ setting which she set up in Wimbledon 32 years ago, is closing down on 21 July and will be taken over by Keren’s Nursery, a chain of three settings in London in September.
She said, ‘I am excited to now have more time to focus on the amazing world of intergenerational practice that we are developing at Apples and Honey Nightingale.’