New Occasional Paper 15 ready to read and share!

'The re/constructed role of nursery schools as local community hubs in the current context of austerity' written by Dr Kate Hoskins, Dr Alice Bradbury and Mr Lewis Fogarty: Brunel University London. 

Early years issues: TACTYC members' perspectives survey

We have put together this survey to enable all our members to share stories of recent issues that concern you acoss the ECEC sector. This includes how the sector is responding to the outbreak of Coronavirus. 

The survey takes around 10 minutes to complete. All information will be anonymous, and it will not be possible for anyone to identify your responses. We will use the information to select forum topics at our upcoming conference, and shape our response to policy developments and consultations.

We appreciate you taking the time to consider responding to this survey. Your voice matters!

The survey link is here and the QR code is here 

Thank you! 

CHARITIES CALL ON GOVERNMENT TO TAKE URGENT ACTION TO KEEP BABIES SAFE

Today, over 40 leading mental health, family and children’s charities and professional bodies are calling on national and local decision makers to give urgent attention to the wellbeing of babies, toddlers and their parents during the COVID-19 crisis. Read the call to action report here. 

Join in with our 'blog posts' or contribute a blog post to share with all our members?

If you feel able to write a blog about the big issues / challenges / celebrations that you are facing during these recent unsettling times please do so. Ideally they should be between 500 and 750 words and must not include any names or clues to where in the country you are. If at the end they could include a couple of discussion questions this may support yourself and others to respond and to think or do things differently as a result of the blog. Please choose a title for your blog post. 

In addition to supporting practitioners at this challenging time they may also become an opportunity for the organisation to really see the needs of all kinds of settings during this time in history.

Please send all blogs to Penny Borkett (Trustee) on [email protected] who will check for editing before they become live. 

ITE OFSTED Inspection Framework - TACTYC response to the consultation

Here is TACTYC's response to the ITE Inspection Framework consultation - please do feel free to comment, share and use, as appropriate. We do hope you will find this useful. 

Childcare Survey

We believe that Government needs to help:

• 41,000 self-employed registered childminders in England and Wales who are not eligible for the majority of financial support for businesses announced to date.
• Just under 28,000 childcare on non-domestic premises who may be eligible for government business support but need that help today, not in a month’s time, as their business doesn’t have the cash flow to keep them afloat until government support is accessible.

So PACEY launched our COVID-19 closure survey today to demonstrate the impact of the forced closures across England and Wales. Childminders and other childcare providers are being urged to answer a few vital questions this week. By doing so, PACEY can demonstrate to government how many settings fear that temporary closure of their service to families, is likely to lead to permanent closure in six months to a year’s time

We know government advice to close has been necessary to help slow the spread of Coronavirus. We are urging every childcare provider to follow government guidance. But, we all have to recognise this will have a devastating impact on the long term sustainability of so many early years and childcare settings, services that families rely, services that have been underfunded for many years.

Of upmost urgency right now is support for the 41,000 registered childminders in England and Wales. Most do not qualify for the current government support available to business. They are self-employed sole traders; most do not deliver early education places so will not continue to receive that funding.  Most are on low incomes, many are single parents and, as of today, can only look to the benefit system for support.

PACEY shares government’s priority to support the childcare providers to survive the impact of Coronavirus and the closures it is forcing on so many of their businesses. More has to be done to understand the long-term impact and the support all childcare providers will need, especially childminders, so that there is a strong early years and childcare sector that families can rely on when we are all able to return to our normal working lives.

Please help us by sharing the survey with your staff, on your social media or other networks over the next week. Childcare providers can take part in the survey here …. 

New Blog Posts 

Dear Members,

Over the past few months TACTYC trustees have been posting blogs onto the website in relation to issues in the early years which they have concerns about. However in these very recent days as a committee we are aware that many practitioners are working in challenging circumstances and we would like to hear from you those challenges.

If you feel able to write a blog about the big issues / challenges / celebrations that you are facing during these unsettling times please do so. Ideally they should be between 500 and 750 words and must not include any names or clues to where in the country you are. If at the end they could include a couple of discussion questions this may support yourself and others to respond and to think or do things differently as a result of the blog.

In addition to supporting practitioners at this challenging time they may also become an opportunity for the organisation to really see the needs of all kinds of settings during this time in history.

Please send all blogs to Penny Borkett (Trustee) on [email protected] who will check for editing before they become live.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Chris Dyson, the Head of Parklands School in Leeds calls for canecllation of Baseline Testing:

https://twitter.com/MoreThanScore/status/1256153215500013570

https://www.facebook.com/morethanascore/videos/601578967104507/

Please do share a national survey of parents who have 2-4 year old children to try and identify how these children are doing, what affects how well they're doing and what help families need in the current circumstances.​ Please feel free to complete it and share it with your networks. The link is: https://sotonpsychology.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_d6VcwC01wqhRxfn

Also, please do encourage parents to take part in the Parentkind survey, which is open until 9am on Monday and can be found here: https://www.parentkind.org.uk/News/Coronavirus-and-school-closures---parents-how-are-you-doing

Here is Occasional Paper 14 'The significance of children's play and empowerment: An observational tool' written by Natalie Canning, Open University. 

New to read for Jan 2020 An internal conflict: policy, practice and pedagogy  A new reflections paper written by Lauren Emery