Supporting the early years workforce
We are commissioned by local authorities / public health to deliver specific projects to support and improve quality in early years services. Our teams provide advice to providers on how to ensure their business is sustainable, how to deliver quality sessions within a safe environment, how to signpost families – as appropriate – to the right service at the right time and how to look after and support the workforce.
Example projects
Play and learn support service (Bradford)
This service is designed to support and uplift informal universal play and learn provision, including baby and toddler groups, across the Bradford district. Its core aim is to ensure these settings are of high quality, promote wellbeing, and encourage health-positive activity, while also positively influencing the home learning environment for young children.
The service places particular emphasis on supporting groups in the most deprived communities, ensuring they receive the additional help needed to:
- Improve access to high-quality early learning experiences
- Support families in their role as children’s first educators
- Enhance outcomes for children attending these settings
The service offers a strong partnership approach with Family Hubs and other key agencies, with eight weekly play and learn sessions delivered directly to families, aligned with the Best Start for Life strategy.
We also deliver support for volunteer-led community groups, including access to training opportunities, and a quality toolkit to raise standards across play and learn and baby/toddler groups.
The Early Years Lead (EYL) team provides expert, consistent advice to families across Bradford, underpinned by trusted guidance. Where appropriate, families are referred to parenting programmes or additional support services to ensure every child and parent receives the help they need.
The service contributes to key Public Health Outcomes Framework indicators, including:
- School-readiness
- Breastfeeding
- Child excess weight (ages 4–5 and 10–11)
- Dental health (proportion of 5-year-olds with dental decay)
It also supports the Bradford Strategic Outcomes and Impact Framework through its core offer for children under five.
During sessions across both the play and learn sessions and in groups, 139 individuals were signposted / referred on to further support / activities, and 67 groups leads to other support organisation.
Group leader feedback
The visits keep everyone, including parents and carers, in touch with all the latest help and support available to ensure the development of all young children who attend the group. It is at toddler groups where both delayed and advanced developmental progress can be highlighted, and the appropriate support given. The Early Years Alliance are paramount in being able to maintain their knowledge and support.”
Baby and toddler services (Birmingham)
Working in partnership with the Birmingham Early Years and Childcare Service and Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, our team provide business support and advice to community stay and play groups within 10 districts in Birmingham and support volunteers who wish to set up new stay and play groups.
The services includes signposting to Birmingham children’s centres and stay and playgroups, and supporting local families and children by engaging with parents and building relationships, reducing isolation and building better communities.
Our teams also share information to increase the take-up of the early entitlement offers by Birmingham families in order to increase the percentage of children achieving the expected level in communication skills and a good level of development at 2 to 2.5 years.
Group leaders are empowered by the guidance and support to:
- understand good and safe practice
- understand child development
- promote positive parenting
- understand and talk about enabling environments
- know how to signpost families to the appropriate service
The team currently engage with over 70 local services and support 169 stay and play groups in Birmingham, who collectively deliver over 200 sessions per week to over 3000 families.
Stay and play group leader feedback
Thank you so much for the toolkit – this support package sounds great. Thank you for all you do to support stay and plays – it’s so appreciated
Thank you for your kind words of support today; we have appreciated your offers of support. We always use the information you share to signpost families – we’d be lost without you.
Early Help Somerset
The service works with all early years educators and settings in Somerset to support them to deliver early help where needed to children and families.
The main focus is to improve outcomes for children by providing a consistent point of contact for advice and resources in order to build capacity, knowledge and confidence of staff in early years settings so that they are able to:
- Support children and families facing specific challenges and to confidently provide early intervention where required
- Support the emotional health and promote wellbeing in the under fives
- Support school readiness
- Narrow the gap between EAL learners and their peers
The team are actively in contact with 113 early years groups/individuals. Of these, 56 contacts were in response to support requested for EAL, while 32 for advice and support for SEND children. We provide further advice and guidance on school-readiness and behaviour, as well as providing relevant contact details of appropriate services that families can be signposted to.
We deliver free training to all providers on
- Supporting children for whom English is an additional language
- Supporting children’s emotional wellbeing
- Understanding trauma-informed practice in the early years
- This is Early Help.
In the last academic year, we delivered 21 courses, which were attended by 255 learners.
Further examples
Strong Early Years London
The Alliance worked with the Mayor of London and Ceeda to offer business support to London’s early years providers through an initiative called Strong Early Years London.
Strong Early Years London provided London’s nurseries and childminders with a sector-specific one-stop-shop on the London Business Hub, and the programme includes a dedicated online business hub and sector-focused consultancy service. The project was led by the Early Years Alliance and delivered in collaboration with London boroughs and other training providers.
The online business hub allowed London’s nurseries, pre-schools and childminders to access a range of sector-specific advice and guidance all in one place, including:
- blogs
- webinars
- ‘Business Connect’ interactive online events exploring topics such as digital marketing, effective staff recruitment and management, business health checks and budget forecasting.
- information about upcoming business-advisory events
- links to dedicated local authority services and wider support for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).
It also delivered up to three hours of expert consultancy services to providers to help business owners and managers identify their specific development needs and offer tailored one-to-one support via video meet or telephone.
Over 400 early years business leaders benefited from the online business hub services.
Ofsted-readiness inspection programme (Oldham)
The Alliance provided targeted support to early years providers identified by the Oldham Local Authority Early Years Team to enable each setting to work positively towards the optimum Ofsted inspection outcome for their setting, and the Alliance also provided post-inspection support visits to enable and encourage pro-active action planning.
Productive relationships with providers have developed with most groups and the Alliance has seen evidence of this through verbal feedback from providers. On occasions, settings not on the identified list have reached out asking for support as a result of targeted providers sharing information about programme benefits with other leaders.
Providers on the identified list who have engaged with the support offer and have been inspected by Ofsted have experienced successful outcomes, either improving on their previous judgement or maintaining the previous outcome.
Work with us
Find out more about how we can support the early years workforce in your area.