Writing in Nursery World about working with children under three, Peter Elfer ends with an appeal: 'We now need to turn our attention at a national level to the demands on and the needs of childcarers working with babies and toddlers. The intense emotional demands of their work remains one of the most neglected areas in early years practice.' ('Close encounters', 30 January 2003.) Julia Manning-Morton takes up this need for practitioner support in Part One of Birth to Three (Nursery World, 22 January 2004), describing the work as 'demanding and complex' and stressing that to work successfully with this age group, practitioners need the support of well-trained and understanding managers.
At Tamworth Early Years Centre in Staffordshire, we have devised various ways to support staff working with the very young. The centre is jointly funded by education and social services and provides integrated care and education for children aged one to four and support for their families.
Our youngest children are just beginning a journey that will teach most of them, as they become older and more able to control their reactions, to separate emotion, bodily function and intellect.
Along the way, however, they can be emotionally volatile, noisy, violent, unpredictable and messily incontinent. Not all practitioners have the experience to be able to cope with such an emotional bombardment.
It is important, therefore, that settings have in place support mechanisms so that staff can feel valued as professionals, confident in their own levels of training and understanding, and aware that they can share their concerns with sympathetic and knowledgeable colleagues.
We are lucky to be working in a well-resourced centre, with all the support the maintained sector enjoys, but many of the ways in which we support staff can be achieved if managers are ready to prioritise staff development.
Talking, listening and reflecting
It is essential that early years staff have time for reflection and opportunities for professional discussion. To achieve this, we have arranged a structure of meetings.
Large group meetings
Staff meet in large groups at:
* weekly team meetings (for over-threes and under-threes teams)
* fortnightly meetings for all over-threes and under-threes staff (with representation from support staff)
* regular support staff meetings.
We see these meetings as vital for sharing information about children, families, policy making, raising concerns and planning events. Anyone can put items on the agenda. The centre's weekly team meetings are chaired by the education manager, who has responsibility for the over-threes provision, and the care manager, who has responsibility for the under-threes provision and family support.
I chair Tamworth's fortnightly whole staff meeting. The centre's support staff, most of whom are part time, meet less often with the bursar, their line manager.
Although these are all 'formal' meetings, in that they are timetabled, have an agenda and are minuted, they are informal in tone. They ensure that all members of staff have access to decision-making and know that their individual voices can be heard by everyone.
Small group meetings
Staff meet in smaller groups at:
* senior management team meetings
* centre working groups
* teachers' meetings
* senior nursery nurse meetings
* SEN staff meetings.
All these meetings have a professional focus, but they also give staff the opportunity to work through any issues they may have in more detail than in the larger meetings.
Meetings with individuals Staff meet individuals at:
* regular supervision sessions with a member of the senior management team to discuss professional development
* planning time. All staff have time during the working week away from their keyworker and group responsibilities to reflect on their own and others' practice and to catch up on paperwork such as planning or children's profiles. During this time, the staff may have meetings with individuals, such as the speech therapist or a colleague working with the over-threes.
Professional development
All staff working with children are qualified to at least NVQ Level 3 and are expected to be involved in ongoing professional development. This is achieved by:
* attending whole-centre training days (five per year)
* attending conferences and courses
* being involved in national early years projects, such as Birth to Three Training Matters, Listening to Young Children and Inclusion Quality Mark
* visiting other settings
* disseminating good practice.
Staff members use such opportunities to identify their professional development needs, then talk through appropriate courses or other learning opportunities with their line manager. Regular meetings also enable staff to share new ideas gleaned through their professional development.
For instance, our involvement in the Birth to Three Training Matters project, with Manchester Metropolitan University and four other centres around the country, has presented us with excellent opportunities to share good practice ideas, both nationally and locally.
It is important to share and disseminate good practice ideas by encouraging staff to lead workshops and to give talks as well as attending them. This sort of involvement explicitly values staff expertise and creates more confident practitioners, who, in turn, become much more confident in their interactions with children and their families.
A good quality curriculum
A good quality 'curriculum' - shorthand here for everything we provide for children - is essential. Well-trained staff who are always improving and updating their knowledge and skills will always give their very best and seek to improve provision.
For instance, since becoming involved with Birth to Three Matters and Listening to Young Children, we have looked again at how we can ensure that observations inform planning and assessment.
We have also discussed what creative play and exploration look like indoors and outside the setting, and we have considered how best to include the youngest of our children in decision-making.
An inclusive environment
Often we work in far from perfect buildings, sometimes we can modify them and sometimes we cannot. However, the quality of the atmosphere created by the staff is the most important factor in creating a healthy environment for learning. Confident staff who feel welcome and valued in their place of work will find it much easier to welcome and value children, parents and visitors.
Inclusion means more than complying with statutes or codes of practice. It means making positive statements about everybody's worth in what we do and say as well as in what level of care we provide. All provision across the centre is based on the shared principles in our learning and teaching policy, our behaviour policy and inclusion policy.
At Tamworth, like everywhere else, we don't get it right all the time. We all have days when we feel we could have been more supportive of a colleague, child or parent, but we do value the connections between each other and all the different aspects of our demanding jobs. NW Since writing this article, Helen Moylett has left Tamworth Early Years Centre to become one of the 12 regional directors for the Foundation Stage appointed by the DfES
Starting points to good practice
Use the following questions as starting points for reflecting upon and developing your practice in supporting practitioners working with under-threes:
* Could you be more creative with time management, for example, setting up more efficiently each morning could free up some valuable time?
* Have you considered ways for all staff to meet together sometimes, even if this requires juggling shifts?
* Have you considered your own attitudes? What messages do you give to staff when you meet them?
* Do staff know that you value them? How can you tell?
* How confident are staff in talking with parents about Birth to Three Matters? How have you managed the introduction of the framework?
* Are you knowledgeable about the learning and development of under-threes? Have you considered your own professional development in this area?
* Do you know what individual staff members find challenging in their day-to-day work?
* Could you find funding for staff development? Have you explored all sources of funding?
* Do you have access to policy makers in your own organisation, locally or nationally? Have you discussed the needs of under-threes staff with them?
