Integrated Family Services and Early Childhood Services

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Transatlantic Forum on Inclusive Early Years 26th January 2015

Malahide, County Dublin, Ireland

Dr Margy Whalley

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My roots and route

Corby

Brazil

Papua New Guinea

Singapore

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Lessons from Brazil

• Dar um jeito • Desconstruir • Conscientizacao • Bruxa • Sabedoria

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Lessons from Papua New Guinea

• Cultural negotiation – consult and co-construct

services with those that want to use them

• Oppressive and dominant cultures generally

disempower (I might be the problem for other

people)

• The importance of multiple perspectives

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• Take what people offer and build on it • Pride matters: never humiliate; never blame • Find reciprocal ways of working • Look to your elders for help • Don't accept being minoritized • Insist on complexity • If you’re seen as ‘trouble’ take it as a compliment • Seize the day and leave no-one behind

Lessons from indigenous peoples Australia, New Zealand and Corby

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Integrated centres for children and families

Integrated centres for children and families working collaboratively with parents and the wider community have the capacity to transform children’s life chances.

“if there is no explicit emancipatory or empowering vision guiding the project from the onset, it will prove difficult to realise any emancipatory effects” BMW Boog 2003

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Corby’s Roots

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Data needs to drive services but it should never be used to define families

1. Safeguarding • rates of child abuse/neglect 15 times higher

than national average where domestic violence is a factor

• referral and re-referral rates amongst the highest in England

2. Neighbourhood Level Challenges • 22% of Corby children live in poverty; some

neighbourhoods up to 45% • 24.5% in low income ‘working poor’ families; some

neighbourhoods up to 43% • pockets of poverty/social challenge

3. Education and Well Being • Some neighbourhoods have over 35% of

adults with no qualifications (England average 22%)

• Corby children’s well-being low, particularly in relation to education outcomes (Corby 28.4% national average 19.8%).

4. Health • 50.2 % of Corby families live in health deprivation spots

(England average 19.6%) • low breastfeeding and high obesity rates • professional concern regarding infant/adult mental

health • increase in number of children with disability/special

needs

5. Population expansion • 35% increase in 0-5s in the last 3 years (Northamptonshire 13%

in same period) • very significant increase in ‘white other’ (largely Eastern

European) families 1.9% - 10.5% in 10 years

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Progressive politicians must take it as a principle that parents love their children with the same intensity regardless of income bracket, and they must make this principle the foundation of their political activity. They are trapped time and again, by the apparently innocuous language of risk management, into positions that, designed to demonise behaviour, actually demonise a class.”

Zoe Williams, The Guardian,Wednesday 12th February 2014

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Why equality is better for everyone inequality = social division

• disadvantaged • discouraged • confidence sapped • stigmatised • segregated • social anxiety

From ‘The Spirit Level’ Wilkinson and Pickett

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Pen Green’s History 1983 - 2015

“In every small community there should be a service for children and their families. This service should honour the needs of young children and celebrate their existence. It should also support families, however, they are constituted within the community”

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Pen Green Centre for Children and Families A place for learning through dialogue with others

• Early years education 0-5yrs

• Extended hours, extended year provision to support families

• Inclusive, flexible, education with care for children with additional needs and children with special rights (SEND)

• Adult Community Education

• Family Support Services and Integrated Health Services

• Focus for voluntary work and community regeneration

• Training and support for early years practitioners • Research and Development • Leadership Professional Development • Early Years Teaching Centre/Teaching School

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Pen Green Centre Early Years Provision

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Baby and Toddler Provision The Nest and Couthie

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Nursery Provision The Snug, Den and

Studio

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Extended Provision across centre

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Extended Provision across centre

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Tracer Study: The voices of their childhoods

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‘How’ is more significant than

‘What’ by encouraging families to participate in the re-shaping of the shared context in which they live out their individual lives by supporting parents and children to become effective public service users by building the capacity of children, families and communities to secure outcomes for themselves by harnessing the community’s energy for change and parent ’ s deep commitment to ensuring that their children have a better deal

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Co-production – 21st Century

‘Co-production means delivering public services in an equal and reciprocal relationship between professionals, people using services, their families and their neighbours. Where activities are co-produced in this way, both services and neighbourhoods become far more effective agents of change.’

From Boyle and Harris (2009) ‘The Challenge of Co-production’

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Pen Green is all about Co-Production Encouraging parents and children to be effective public

service users: creating social and cultural capital

• Parents have the right to expect high quality, flexible services that respond to the changing needs of their families. Services need to be flexible and responsive to 21st century challenges to family life

• Staff need to believe in parent’s deep commitment to supporting their children’s learning. They need to encourage parents to increase their competence

• Parents and staff both need to have high expectations of the children. They need to work together to help children be all that they can be

• Parents have a commitment to being involved in designing, developing, delivering and evaluating local services. We have to release the great untapped energy within the community

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Community Participation Driving Service Delivery

1981-82 Campaign against the local Borough Council to re-roof local housing stock

1982-83 LAG – Local Advisory Group against the Pen Green Centre

1983-85 Parents conceptualising services Parents appointing staff Parents as volunteers Parents sharing power 1985-87 Parents as service providers Parents engaged in their own learning 1987-90 Parents as group leaders Parents as community activists

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1990-97 Parents as co-educators involved in their children’s learning Parents as paid workers 1997-07 Parents as trouble shooters Parents as policy makers Parents as co-researchers and evaluators Parents as governors 2007 – 2012 Parents developing innovative projects

– Total Place Corby Parents developing websites, Facebook, Twitter Parents running local, regional and National

Campaigns 2013 Parents and children as committed, critical and vigilant public service users 2014 Parents develop their own civic charitable bodies (CIO) Pen Green being and becoming a public service mutual

Community Participation Driving Service Delivery

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Volunteer Engagement in co-production

Informal Social Networking inside and outside centres

NewStart Volunteers (within children’s centres)

Group Leaders/ Parent researchers/evaluators

Home-Start Volunteers

Parent School Governors (across the school system)

Single Issue activists for example; •Parents with children with special rights •Fathers not living in the family home •Parents from minoritized groups

Parent community activists (Breast feeding support, Out of hours services) Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) Trustees

Parent champions linked to political representatives (Borough Council/ County Council),

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“Finally, because timebanking and co-production grow out of my own life and work in the civil rights movement, I have to add that hell-raising is a critical part of co-production and of the labour that it entails it must value. Those with wealth, power authority and credentials hold those assets as stewards for those who came before and in trust for those yet unborn. They must be held accountable - and sometimes that requires the creation of new vehicles that give rise to scrutiny, to questioning, to criticism, and to social protest. Timebank programmes can create those vehicles in ways that enlist the community - and that tap the knowledge that the community has about what is working and what is not working”

Professor Edgar Cahn Washington Civil Rights Lawyer

No more throwaway people: the co-production imperative

Hell-raising

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I’m strong;

I’m able to challenge;

I’m able to question

I’m able to choose;

I feel good about being me

Communities of Oppression ‘Learning to be Strong’ - children, parents and staff

1984 ‘Learning to be strong’ A curriculum document for parents and children

Children should feel strong

Children should feel in control

Children should feel able to question

Children should feel able to choose

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Tracer Study: Emerging Critical Concerns

• Children who experience the transition from nursery to school as traumatic

Issues – participation, power, trust • Parents who find it hard to mediate on behalf

of their children Issues – multiple social, economic and

psychological challenges

Scott

Becky

Curtis

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'In childhood most autobiographical narratives are co-constructed with others, usually the parents or siblings ... the parent and child work together to gather the pieces of the story, order them sequentially, give them a coherence as a story, and then evaluate the story by establishing its emotional high-points and values... A new body of research views the co-construction between parent and child as a form of regulation having much in common with other forms of regulation'(Stern, 1998 p. xxiv)

Stern, D (1998) The Interpersonal World of the Infant London:Karnac

Parents as Advocates

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Jonathan

Jonathan aged 4

Jonathan aged 21

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Parents as Advocates

“Nothing gets under a parents skin more quickly and more permanently than the illumination of his or her own children’s behaviour. The effects of participation can be profound.”

(Athey, 1990, p66)

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Sharing Knowledge With Parents: Staff as cultural brokers/mediators

“The roles of professional experience and parents’ everyday experience are seen as complementary but equally important. The former constitutes a ‘public’ (and generalised) form of ‘theory’ about child development, whilst the latter represents a ‘personal theory’ about the development of a particular child. An interaction between the two theories or ways of explaining a child’s actions may produce an enriched understanding as a basis for both to act in relation to the child. Only through the combination of both types of information could a broad and accurate picture be built up of a child’s developmental progress.” (Easen et al, 1992)

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Co-education

Parents are involved in supporting their own child’s learning and development 24/7 - this needs to be recognised and home learning

and nursery learning needs to be shared

Parents engage in adult community education

Parents get involved in devising or delivering services for other parents

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The future: Integrated Centres for

Children and Families A future model could be different. The starting point could

be that of local people co-constructing the design for their own children’ s centre. There would still be a need for qualified staff, and for professional services. The shift would be that in every centre local people would be supported to do more for themselves and would become far more discerning consumers of public services over which they have far greater control.

The key will be to redesign services to enable more

reciprocity; people want to identify their own solutions. Children ’ s centres could become firmly rooted in their communities and one of their purposes would be to create and sustain strong, supportive relationships for people to draw on.

Children’s centres in the 21st Century Document

Pen Green/Innovation Unit 201 – page 9

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Children’s centres and integrated settings and services engage effectively with parents:

• When staff are well qualified, opportunities for reflection and dialogue have a strong theoretical base

• When staff are well supported, in provision that is well resourced and securely funded

• When staff adopt an ‘equal and active’ approach • When staff have cultural humility • When staff are capable or cultural brokerage and mediation

• When staff think systemically

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All staff and many parents are Practitioner Researchers

• Where the ethics of the encounter with co workers, parents and children are paramount

• Where all ECE workers are encouraged to see themselves as researchers of their own practice

• Where there is a commitment to developing new research methodologies that support Research from the Underside,

• ‘The values I hold are such that I long for the end of poverty and the promotion of equality. My interest in research is thus just this, how can research help the poor?’ (Holman, 1987, p.669)

• Where people’s answers are believed and acted upon • Where research both informs and leads to improvement in practice • Where participation in the research process can be emancipatory

for participants • Where the critical questions are generated by users and providers of

the service

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Reflexive Professionalism

• Exploring dissensus • Valuing the ‘other’ • Co-constructing knowledge with children,

parents and colleagues • Always acting with a focus on change Jan Peeters 2008 Michel Vandenbroeck 2009

EYP/EYITT Training ELC & University of Bedfordshire

Initial Teacher Training

Hertfordshire University

PhD Early Years Leadership Focus Leicester University

National Professional Qualification in

Integrated Centre Leadership

MA Leadership & Management

Middlesex University

MA In Integrated Provision for Children and Families Leicester University Early Development and Learning Research Methods Practitioner Research Working With Parents and their Infants and Young Children Working With Families and Complexity Leadership Learning within Teams

Advanced Module in Groupwork

Homestart Training

Group Work Training (introductory)

EYP’s Professional Development and Support

‘University of the Workplace’ PEN GREEN AS A LEARNING ORGANISATION -

developing the children’s centre workforce An Early Years Teaching School

BA (Hons) Top-up University of Hertfordshire

Foundation Degree in Early Years Hertfordshire University

Adult Community Education Courses Functional Skills Get Creative Transactional Analysis Counselling Skills Mood Mapping

Family Learning Programmes Maths English ESOL

Parents Involved in their Children’s Learning groups Parents’ Support Groups / Discussion Groups

Aim Awards credit for courses at levels 1 & 2 e.g., Crèche Work Training, Confident Parents/Confident Children Parents as Researchers New Start Volunteer course

CACHE Level 3 Diploma – Children & Young People’s Workforce

The Climbing Frame of

Opportunity

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Dr Margy Whalley

Director of Pen Green Centre for Children and Families and Pen Green Research Base

Telephone 01536 443435 Fax 01536 463960 Email mwhalley@northamptonshire.gov.uk

Website www.pengreen.org