It’s always so lovely to meet early years staff who are cheerful, consistent and confident across all aspects of their practice. These individuals provide the hallmark of high-quality provision. They make a real difference to children, families, their work colleagues and often to wider communities too.
Which is why it is so worrying to read that their wellbeing is becoming increasingly in short supply. According to research carried out by the Anna Freud Centre, two-thirds of early years practitioners believe the pandemic has had a negative impact on their mental health and happiness.
Half of those questioned in its most recent survey said that stress in the workplace in the past 12 months has caused them to feel unwell (see page 42).
This presents managers and nursery owners with the massive problem of how to remedy an ‘ill’ workforce – particularly in the current climate where Covid continues to deliver its challenges. It seems the most proactive of employers are making headway, as our series on staff wellbeing highlights. This month we find out what a wellbeing policy looks like in practice and which interventions are gaining ground. Giving staff access to information, signposting services and getting the mental health discussion out in the open are all good starting points.
There has never been a more important time for early years practitioners to provide positive role models for children. In her article on page 34, Helen Garnett explores how children can be supported to develop kindness and highlights that empathy cannot grow where there is ‘dysregulation’. In order for children to become self-regulators, adults must provide co-regulation in the form of ‘steady, loving support’. Where adults themselves are unregulated, it becomes hard to model kindness. While self-regulation can be challenging for children, it can be similarly so for adults when they are feeling low or anxious.