The recruitment crisis is placing excessive strain on an already fragile early years workforce. The challenge for providers in recruiting high-quality practitioners has never been so great. As struggling leaders attempt to balance their books each day and run their settings to the highest standard, there is now becoming an increasing over-reliance on having to use agency and temporary staff. But how well does this work in practice and what impact, if any, does it have on quality and the provision for young children?
Many settings we have visited over the last year have all, at some point, had to use temporary, bank or agency staff to cover absence. Some are having to use them daily and often have long-term placements until permanent roles are filled.
The increasing reliance on agency staff brings a host of challenges. Leaders are constantly juggling numbers and almost ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’ to stay compliant. Most have the needs of children at the forefront of their staffing decisions. But, ultimately, the children are at risk of suffering the greatest impact.
Those in charge strive to offer consistent, well-planned routines which are based exclusively around what they know children need. But with daily swaps of well-known staff, new faces appearing regularly who do not know the children or routines, and the stress this has on existing staff, we have seen leaders and providers tirelessly look to recruit permanent staff, and the employee benefits now being offered are impressive. Some settings are also on the brink of closure as they must cap occupancy at unsustainable levels due to the lack of available staff.
Our priority will always be providing the best for children. But we recognise the challenges this brings. New staff arriving each day or week is disruptive for children, but also time-consuming for leaders. Each person must be inducted thoroughly, even if only present for a day. Crucially, a temporary staff member's identity must be checked. We are aware of a case where a different person arrived at a nursery than had been clearance-checked and placed by the agency. If the manager had not gone through the company's rigorous checking process, this individual would have worked in the nursery completely unvetted. The consequences of this story with a different outcome do not bear thinking about. Agencies must be robust and rigorous in checking the suitability of candidates and ensuring that leaders also double-check this through their own induction processes.
All temporary staff must be suitably trained in safeguarding arrangements. This is not something we have seen routinely. All those who work with children, employed or temporary, must be aware of the action they must take to report concerns and keep children safe. Some agency staff may be working in different settings each day, where procedures are different. Leaders must ensure, each day, that an agency staff member is fully aware of their own setting's reporting procedures.
We have also noticed the stress placed on room leaders and other employed staff when agency staff are present. Often restrictions about the use of agency staff mean more duties are placed on employed staff. This leads, at times, to reduced focus on the support for children's high-quality teaching and learning experiences while employed staff are deployed to routines, such as nappy changing.
We witnessed in one setting a Level 6 trained room leader changing nappies nearly all day, leaving the children in the care of Level 2 and unqualified employed staff and agency staff. Any ‘teaching’ that took place that day was of much lower quality than we had witnessed from the room leader's usual practice.
We absolutely support the requirement for vetting and appropriately checked staff to complete intimate care routines. We also wholly accept the need for personal care to be completed by adults who know the children well to support emotional security. However, the imbalance in deployment of tasks, sometimes, leads to resentment among employed staff. They often tell us they feel overwhelmed and stressed by the levels of work falling to them. Children are, of course, unsettled when new faces appear and will often gravitate to the staff they know well. Babies find it harder to be comforted by staff they do not know. The strain on having a group of distressed babies to comfort is extremely stressful at times.
From our experience, leaders must be clear with agency staff about what is expected of them. Yes, the setting's health and safety, emergency procedures and safeguarding plans must be discussed in detail, but a simple overview of what is expected of a Level 3 trained agency staff member is also essential. Quite often, we have seen Level 3 trained staff sitting silently with a small group of children with no interaction. The presence of a new person does not have to be a scary experience for a child. If that person has been appropriately introduced to the children by familiar staff, the positive engagement process can quickly begin. Room leaders must deploy agency staff to small groups and ask them to play alongside children, talk to them, ask them questions, and simply get to know them. If a sensitive, supportive approach is shown, children will respond.
The imbalance of quality is a frustration for all those involved. Leaders set out to have high expectations, an ambitious curriculum, and a well-embedded pedagogy. This is harder to deliver when there is a repeated turnover of staff. The challenge of providing high-quality teaching consistently throughout the day is hard to achieve. This emphasises again the need for room leaders to be clear in their direction and expectation of what happens in their rooms.
Those in charge must support all room leaders to role model good practice and lead by example, particularly when there is a reliance on the need for using agency staff. Any underperformance must be identified swiftly so that weaker practice is immediately addressed. Children deserve a constant level of high quality, no matter who is looking after them each day.
Agencies must be held to account more. They must brief candidates more clearly before each placement and ensure they have the skills, knowledge and calibre to be an effective practitioner. The agency's vetting should be more rigorous to check that an individual is suitably prepared to work in a setting. For example, what previous experience do they have? Equally, agencies must be responsive to what settings need. It is not helpful to deploy untrained individuals with no early years’ experience and, at times, with limited spoken English into a nursery with young children. We have seen this happen quite regularly and the impact on teaching is significant. Agencies charge a high fee for their placement services; leaders need something of value in return. We need to work together to tackle this situation.
- Our next article will explore in more detail how to better utilise agency staff in settings
CASE STUDY: Yellow Duck Childcare
Eamon Aaron, the co-owner of Yellow Duck Childcare, a recruitment and consultancy business, says it has seen a steady increase in demand for temporary staff in recent years, with demand for qualified staff especially high.
He told Nursery World, ‘Since our inception, we have seen a steady increase in demand for temporary staff.
‘The range of people we have on our books and those applying to become Play Explorers (the term used for our temporary team) is diverse, ranging from students and unqualified applicants to qualified early childhood educators of all levels.
‘However, the recruitment sector is facing similar challenges to those faced by early years providers, staff shortages especially of qualified staff, mainly due to Brexit and changes to the full and relevant qualifications.’
He said Yellow Duck Childcare has rigorous recruitment and vetting procedures that come from his and his co-owners’ many years of operating outstanding early years settings.
‘We set clear standards of expected conduct and performance for our Play Explorers on placements,’ explained Eamon. ‘Our recruitment and vetting procedure includes a rigorous interview, reference, DBS and identity checks, completion of our suitability and declaration form.
‘They must also pass our in-house safeguarding and Play Explorer training. We will be rolling out additional training in March.
‘We expect our Play Explorers to conduct themselves professionally, have a can-do attitude and have good language skills enabling them to fully support the children's learning and support the nursery team.
‘We are passionate about the early years sector and genuinely aim to support settings in providing the best care and education, which has been and will always be our primary aim.’
When the recruitment and consultancy business confirms a booking, it emails the nursery the Play Explorer's profile, which includes a photo and details of their DBS. Play Explorers are also provided with a profile of the nursery they will be working at, containing information about the setting's approach/ethos.
‘Not all agencies are the same, some really care about the early childhood sector, as we do,’ Eamon added.
