Risky Play or Not Risky Play - That is the Question!

Ellen Sandseter is a well-known professor at Queen Maud University College for Early Childhood Education in Trondheim, Norway but we all know her for her thoughtful and challenging work on risky play.

If you are interested in a conversation about risky play from a leader in the field, listen here!

The Power of Intergenerational Nurseries

In this podcast, I speak to Sue Egersdorff, co-founder of the intergenerational Ready Generations Nursery at Belong, in Chester.  Her work is a powerful reminder that early childhood settings are not just educational spaces – they’re deeply embedded in the wider social and political landscape.

Are children deprived of the opportunity to play?...

...is not a new question, but one that continues to be tackled on many levels. Greg Bottrill’s book 'Can I Go and Play Now?' remains a catalyst for the conversation and highlights the importance of adults as loving companions, advocating for children’s right to a childhood.

If you have been frog marched through books, why would you ever read for pleasure? asks Frank Cottrell-Boyce, the Children’s Book Laureate. 

The award-winning author and screenwriter Frank Cotterell Boyce is the 13th Children's Laureate of the United Kingdom, a role created by The BookTrust to champion every child’s right to a lifetime enriched with books and stories – recognising the transformative power of reading  in children's lives.  

Join us on the podcast and hear Frank talk about the rights of children to stories, books, libraries and what he would do with a magic wand.

Professional Love: The Beating Heart of Early Years Education and Care 

On Valentine’s Day, there is much talk about romantic love, but we are talking about a very different kind of love; professional love, a term coined by Dr Jools Page and familiar to many colleagues across the Early Years sector. 

Introducing the phrase professional love gave permission to Early Years colleagues to use the word ‘love’ in the professional context. I was delighted to replace the word ‘care’ with ‘love’ because for many, the relationship we have with the children is pure reciprocal love.  

Creating loving relationships between staff and babies or toddlers is at the heart of nurturing positive early childhood experiences. A culture of warmth and sensitivity, paired with thoughtful policies and processes, can establish an environment where professional love thrives.

This podcast concludes with me asking Jools what three wishes she has for the Early Years sector?  Obviously, I am not going to tell you what she said, for this you need to tune in and find out!

Unpacking The Twoness of Twos 

 
The Government has agreed to continue the roll out of funded places for two-year-olds, with talk of putting them into schools. Many are concerned that this plan may ignore the uniqueness of the two-year-olds. To mitigate this, my colleague Louise Hannan, (currently researching the emotional environment for two-year-olds) and I have refreshed the original Twoness of Twos report to raise awareness about our role in ensuring two-year-olds thrive in every setting. 

Listen in to find out more. 
Download the report for FREE here - https://mailchi.mp/leyf.org.uk/twoness-of-twos 

A Right to be Children: The Importance of the Design Architecture 

The importance of architecture to Early Years is often misunderstood. The building is part of the enabling environment and needs to be designed to support learning by creating the right environment and resources both indoors and outside. They are also integral to meeting the sustainability pillars; economic, social and environments in their design for example where they are situated, and how they support local communities and the local biodiversity.  Nowadays, people are thinking even more about the towns and cities, the city of play and how to make them child friendly and position schools and nurseries as community catalysts.

If you are interested in design and want to understand why it matters and how we need a strong relationship with architects, then listen here.

Sarah Ronan is the director of the Early Education and Childcare Coalition (EECC) – an organisation made up of 35 members which represent children, parents, providers, the Early Years workforce and the wider business community.

Like many others in the Early Years sector, Sarah's journey is deeply personal. Her own experiences with inaccessible childcare, combined with her passion for women’s issues, led her to work with organisations like the Women’s Budget Group and Pregnant Then Screwed. She firmly believes that access to childcare is a core feminist issue – not only for women as parents but also for the predominantly female workforce in the sector. It also shines a light on the broader politics of care and its critical importance in society.

Building a coalition in the Early Years sector is no small feat. It requires both time and resources, especially in a field as diverse and market driven as this. The first year of the coalition's work focused on laying the groundwork behind the scenes –aligning priorities and getting everything in place before officially launching its efforts.

Key to this is producing robust research evidence and effective policy solutions, both of which require significant energy to drive the movement forward and, according to Sarah, this has been lacking in Early Years for some time.

Her long-term ambition is for a movement that is not just a formal group of people but one that weaves together all the informal structures, dynamics and mechanisms that exist into a powerful catalyst that can become a force for change and therefore a force for good.

Sarah raises the challenges of a coalition which are not just keeping the energy powered but also securing funds to create the communication content and lead the advocacy to get in front of the right people. It is these individuals who can help drive the change needed to create a fair and accessible service for all children and their families.

So, have a listen to a master class on developing networks and coalitions in an Early Years that must do much more to share our powerful message with politicians, policy makes and the public.

There is a lot of concern about recently qualified staff who appear to find adjusting to the workplace a challenge and seem to have emerged with degrees which are low quality. As an employer of nearly 1000 staff, that is an issue, because my job isn’t simply to recruit staff but to succession plan ( and I don’t mean that in a Brian Cox sort of way!). 
Therefore, these concerns which I am hearing about from many quarters are of concern.  But are these facts or rumours and setting out self -fulfilling prophesies? Is it just university ranking snobbery? 

So, I asked Professor Eunice Lumsden, from the University of Northampton who heads up the Childhood Youth and Families Department and is responsible for a whole suite of degrees from undergraduate to postgraduate, that cover a raft of subjects including early childhood studies, education, social work to working with children. 

Listen to find out what this means for us as employers and university and college teachers! 

It seems strange that in 2024 parents feel the need to lead a campaign about healthy food, but with the help of the Children’s Food Campaign at Sustain, that’s exactly what they are doing. Indeed, they managed to get to meet members of parliament to share their manifesto with them.

In this podcast I speak to Barbara Crowther, Children’s Food Campaign Manager at Sustain and parent ambassador Jaynaide Powis about their comprehensive polling of over 2,000 parents conducted by Savanta and the Children’s Food Campaign which has helped determine the biggest challenges faced by parents in the current food system and their top priorities for change.  

Listen as we explore topical questions such as:  

1. Is it time to stop our snacking culture?  
2. Do we need to go back to the days when we all learned to cook in the home economics class at school  
3. Should nurseries have free nursery food and should all chefs be trained with  credible Chef qualification such as our degree from the Early Years Chef Academy ? 
4. Do we need statutory food guidance for nurseries and childminders? 
5. Should Ofsted be inspecting food in nurseries and childminders? 
6. What further policies are needed to support them.