How guided play helps parents give a boost to children's development
Emily Rogers
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Early years project ensures children are ready for school.
Project: Starting Out - Together It's Child's Play
Funding: £25,000 from the Dorset Police and Crime Commissioner from April last year, plus £14,000 from sales of the programme to schools and early years providers
Background: Poole Council's early years staff have long been aware of the importance of the early home learning environment in helping children thrive at school. In 2011 early learning advisory teacher Jeanette Yorke was tasked with devising a programme to support parents.
"Ofsted says we need to track children right the way across Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), so we can see the impact that we're making," says Yorke, now the council's child development and school readiness lead. "I wanted a home learning programme that would work across early years settings and children's centres to the end of reception."
The Starting Out programme was piloted from September 2011 with £20,000 from Poole Council. It has since been rolled out to 926 children in 17 schools and to 26 early years settings, 60 childminders and all Poole children's centres.
Action: Starting Out is delivered to targeted families at home and in children's centres, and universally to children in early years settings and in primary schools' reception year.
Families are invited to take part in the programme at children's centres, after being identified with help from partner agencies such as health services. This involves six weekly group sessions where parents try out different activities with their children and learn how these help their development.
Families reluctant to engage or not yet ready for these groups are offered a series of around six home visits. An outreach worker visits with an activity sack containing resources for different activities such as messy play. The worker talks parents through their children's development and helps engage them in different types of play, sometimes through trips to the beach, park or shops. Parents are then invited to join the group sessions, if appropriate.
Early years providers and childminders use 15 activity sacks, each of which can be borrowed by parents for around a week. Five focus on physical development, five on personal, social and emotional development and five on communication and language. Each sack contains items and instructions for a fun activity, as well as information about how this contributes to their child's brain development. Parents are guided in the right words to use to boost their child's language skills.
Parents fill in a booklet to show what they have done, enabling early years practitioners to follow children's progress. "I say to parents 'You're the experts on your children, we're the experts on child development'," says Yorke.
Early years practitioners receive initial training and ongoing support from Yorke to deliver the programme. Schools also have 15 activity sacks for parents to borrow, covering the seven areas of the EYFS curriculum. Teachers receive initial training and termly workshops are held for parents.
Outcome: Analysis by Poole Council suggests the programme has contributed to an increase in the proportion of children achieving a "good" level of development in their EYFS profile at the end of reception. In 2013 before embarking on Starting Out, 42 per cent of children in 11 primaries had achieved this. This increased to 59 per cent in 2014, after an academic year of Starting Out. This 17 percentage point increase in performance was compared with results from seven primaries not using the programme where there was only an eight percentage point rise in children achieving a "good" level of development over the same time period.
Of the 79 parents who borrowed activity sacks, three-quarters said they were now spending more time playing with their children, 42 per cent said they were spending more time on letters and numbers and 49 per cent said the sacks sparked ideas for their own activities.
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