Welcome to the second edition of the Newsletter!

This is our second newsletter and following all the background information in the first edition now we can update you on the progress that has been made around the country. As usual we have case studies and examples of the work that's taking place in the delivery projects all across England, along with an events' calendar so that you can keep up to date with any conferences or significant occasions that will be taking place in the near future (*see our calendar).

We hope that you enjoy reading it!

About ELPP and the Newsletter
The FPI project team
Overview of progress across all 3 strands
"What a difference a day makes…"
The Events Calendar
What's new at FPI?

 

About ELPP and the Newsletter

What does the Project do?
The importance of early learning is widely acknowledged and with this in mind the DCSF has been funding the Early Learning Partnership Project (ELPP) since October 2006. The project demonstrates different approaches to identifying and engaging parents of children aged 1-3 who are at risk of learning delay, and support them to get involved in their child's early learning. The focus is on parents who may not otherwise understand the value of their role in their child's early learning, or would not know how to get involved.

What is the purpose of the Newsletter?
The funding for this work is due to finish in March 08. This means that we are over half way through this unique project. To show the progress that is being made we have some of the most up to date beneficiary numbers included in this newsletter. As well as information about courses and training that the projects have completed and will be offering in the future.

The FPI Project Team

Who's who at Family and Parenting?

Most of the team are still in post – Honor Rhodes, Christa McGrath and Kendra Massey, however since the last newsletter Maria Galan has left and David Ferris has taken her post in an administration and communication role.

Overview of progress across all 3 Strands

We are really trying to strengthen the position of the ELPP work within the regions that the work is taking place; an important aspect of this embedding is linking up with other similar projects. The PPEL (Parents as Partners in Early Learning) project is a sister initiative which is taking place in many of the same areas across England as the ELPP. This is a list (will be a hyperlink of this soon!) of where this is happening, please have a look and if you are working on either of the projects then do get in touch and see how your work could/or indeed is overlapping!

STRAND 1
Delivery
Barnardos: Is working in both the NE and the SW of the country. In the NE they are about to begin their 3rd Fathers Course working in partnership with Seven Stories to deliver PEEP/Family Learning and are actively working to increase the number of fathers who are attending by linking into local fatherhood events which are activity based and thus more likely to attract a wide audience of male carers. To date 278 parents have participated in their various courses and PEEP groups. In the SW, home PEEP is established and growing across the three areas of the city using a range of referral sources. Targeted groups are running with BME groups with more due to come on this autumn and the PEEP programme is being delivered across the city in a range of formats to meet the needs of individual families, communities and groups. To date they have trained a total of 47 of target of 51 practitioners.

ContinYou: Is partnering Pen Green Research in Leeds, Bradford, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire to provide PICL (Parents Involvement in their Children's Learning) for staff in children's centres helping parents understand how their children develop and learn and in Telford, Thurrock Community Mothers is developing a programme to involve midwives and health visitors in the identification of families whose children are at risk of learning delay. The Northants training has been completed by 23 facilitators and they are now recruiting families. The training for facilitators has begun in Croydon and this work will accelerate the progress that can be made with families in the area. As well as the training and the outreach work, ContinYou is planning a joint event with Penn Green for this month to disseminate ELPP learning to new authorities. To date Still waiting for the most recent beneficiary figures (19th Nov 07)

Coram Family: is partnering PAFT (Parents as First Teachers) in Camden and Islington. There is a mixture of approaches involved in the delivery of this programme they are: home visits, one to one work, group workshops and practitioner training. So far 64 families have benefited from the one to one support that they are providing. In October Coram was recruiting two new temporary staff in order to increase the projects capacity. Additional PAFT training commissioned for this month will take place November to train up new staff will be offered more widely for practitioners in the local community. Coram has agreed to expand the group work component of the program significantly due to demand for this service – which will increase the number of families and parents who will benefit from the support they are offering. To date 107 families have participated in the programmes that Coram is delivering.

Family Welfare Association: Is partnering Home-Start and PAFT along with FWA's Newpin family play programme, in Norfolk, Southwark and Sheffield. In Norfolk, the referral numbers for the young parents group continue to increase with 5 families regularly attending and 3 more families receiving home-visits which are preparing them for the groups. All of the parents courses drop in sessions have been completed. To date 65 parents have received 1 to 1 support and 102 families have taken part. In Sheffield they are running 2 successful Newpin groups, with 2 more scheduled of which 1 is a fathers group and another is targeted at families living in women's refuges. They continue to deliver PEAL training with Home-Start to parents. To date 95 families have participated with the services that they provide and 121 children have benefited from their work. In Southwark FWA have established all working posts despite initial setbacks with employment, they continue to strengthen the awareness strategy that they have in place – they're networking with 2 of the local children's centres and Somali women's groups. They are currently delivering their 4th round of Newpin sessions. To date they have contacted 28 of a target total of 35 parents through their work.

Home-Start: is partnering One plus One and Book Start in Worcestershire and four London boroughs (Camden, Harrow, Westminster and Croydon). The initial training for the London schemes was completed with 10 participants. There was a national Home-Start convention was held in Edinburgh, where a large amount of dissemination took place and the profile of the work was raised across the country. While trying to raise the profile of the work going on during Family Learning week Home Start produced a large batch of Family Carrier Bags. And they would like to highlight the large amount of joined up work that is taking place and really effective partnership work that is taking place between themselves and Bookstart. Home Start has provided 1 to 1 support to 102 families and has trained 150 practitioners.

National Children's Home (NCH): is partnering PAFT (Parents as First Teachers) and the Campaign for Learning in North Solihull conducting work that is aimed at Fathers. NCH is also running drop in courses for fathers that are taking place throughout the course of the project; there are also fun days and football training and games which take place against other local children's centres. They are increasing their home visits while adopting the PAFT approach as well as devising a programme which uses the garden as a learning resource tool; an allotment has been secured for this purpose. To date 10 practitioners have been trained and 48 families have participated in the programmes.

Pre-School Learning Alliance: is partnering the National Childminding Association (NCMA), PEEP, ICAN and PEAL in Cumbria and Staffordshire. The work is aiming to contact and engage with isolated families and these families are offered the communication, language and learning support that have been developed by PEEP and ICAN. 51 practitioners have been trained to deliver this support, and so far 600 families have participated in the programmes that are on offer – this has resulted in an estimated total of 1080 children benefiting from the project to date.

STRAND 2
The Evaluation
The Oxford Research Team has interviewed the seven voluntary agencies involved in the Early Learning Partnership Project. Sixteen of the planned eighteen visits to settings have taken place, and during these visits staff interviews were carried out to gain an understanding of the project. Observations of staff working with ELPP families were undertaken as well as some focus groups with families and home visits, and analysis of data is being carried out. The team is now planning for the second round of visits, which will take place between mid-November and early January.

We're very grateful for the co-operation of everyone involved in the evaluation, and would particularly like to thank those of you who are recruiting families for us for the home visits, which is very important. We look forward to working with you all in the second phase.

STRAND 3
Workforce Development
National Children's Bureau and Parenting UK:
PEAL Update
With our partner organisations the National Day Nurseries Association, Pre-school Learning Alliance and National Childminding Association, we have now recruited and prepared 40 trainers for rolling out PEAL training to practitioners from September. Over 108 events have been booked around the country and bookings are now being taken.
Preparations are well underway for the additional materials, which will be used, such as a newly produced version of the DVD, with newly shot sequences based on the original filmed project examples.
Significant progress has been made towards accrediting PEAL as a level 3 unit of the Working With Parents Award.
The new PEAL web site is due to go live towards the end of August - further details on all the events and booking process will be available on the new site.
www.peal.org.uk
Sue Owen and Paulina Fillipou from NCB organised stands to be at all of the EYFS November conferences across England disseminating information about PEAL and the other two strands of ELPP, which was all included in a ELPP leaflet that had been created for the event.

"What a difference a day makes…"

In this section we share the day to day experiences (triumphs and challenges) from one of the delivery projects. Image: Images/ELPP/fwa.jpg
In this newsletter it is – FWA.

FWA– 'Follow My Child' Play Sessions

The Early Learning Partnership Project in Swaffham held two 'Follow My Child' play sessions in August. The sessions combined the Parents as First Teachers and Newpin Family Play Programme models. They were designed to involve parents in how their children learn from various play activities and included messy play, a book corner, collage, and exploration with rice and pasta. The room was set up to focus on shared experiences with an emphasis on having fun together. Parents were encouraged to take time to observe how their child plays; to allow the child to take the lead; and to increase their understanding of what is meaningful play to their child at this stage in his or her development. Activity 'stations' displayed a sign and leaflets describing the benefit of each area of play to the child. Towards the end of the morning, following a break for drinks and fruit, parachute games rounded off the session. Transport was provided from outlying villages and 1:1 support from Homestart volunteers for families who needed a helping hand.

Feedback from parents was very positive: "It is nice for the children to be able to express themselves without having to make something they have been told to do by an adult" "My favourite thing about the session was getting ideas for play at home" "I had never thought about what my child learns from playing with play dough; now I can see that I am helping."

Rachel, 24, was identified four years ago as at risk of post natal depression after a routine hospital visit. She didn't have a family to support her, her circle of friends did not have children yet and there was concern that she was going to be spending a lot of time alone at home with her baby.
She was assigned a Newpin befriender and it was through her befriender that she was introduced to the Newpin centre in her local area when her daughter was 8 months old.
Rachel is now taking part in Newpin's play project – funded by the ELPP - with her second child, a two-year-old boy.
In her group there are four parents and their children and two workers. Through play Rachel learns both how to relate better to her son and also how to help him developmentally.
Rachel says, "He got this box and put it over his head – and instead of telling him its naughty, I have to do it as well, to gain an understanding of why he is doing it. We copy them. It's fun to see the children responding to it." She and her son paint and draw together and invent games with cardboard boxes. For Rachel it has been a lifeline and a chance do things with her son she would never dream of doing at home, as well as to meet and talk with other people like her.
Carolyn Martin who coordinates the project hopes that with ELPP money they can take the project out to groups who might not otherwise be able to have access to it – for instance refugees, asylum seekers and people identified by the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service.

The Events Calendar (dates for your diary)

This is currently being updated and you will soon be able to see it online by clicking here….

What's new at FPI?

The Family and Parenting Institute is alarmed by the broadcasting of exploitative parenting series such as Bringing Up Baby. Many techniques used in these programmes are outdated and completely fly in the face of our scientific knowledge about brain development in very young babies.
I'M A LITTLE KID, GET ME OUT OF HERE
On Monday 12 November the Royal Television Society hosted a debate with Eileen Hayes, Parenting Advisor, NSPCC, Mary MacLeod, Chief Executive, Family and Parenting Institute, Laura Mansfield, Executive Producer, The House of Tiny Tearaways, and Tanya Shaw, Executive Producer, Bringing Up Baby, chaired by Conor Dignam, Publishing Director, Broadcast. To read Mary MacLeod's speech, Icon: Microsoft Word Documentclick here Icon: Link to another website.

 

This newsletter is distributed to all three strands of the project to give everyone the opportunity to see what progress is being made and what else is going on in both your geographical area and your field of work. It is distributed on a three monthly basis and we really appreciate any feedback that you could offer – either improvements or suggested content. Please do send in information about the work going on in your areas and it will be included in this newsletter and will help us to raise the profile of the important work which is going on!

The next newsletter is not scheduled until February next year, so if we hope that in the mean time you all have a very happy Christmas break and a happy New Year!

Thank you for your interest in the project

Please contact:
Kendra Massey
Grants Officer/Administrator
Family and Parenting Institute,
430 Highgate Studios,
53-79 Highgate Road,
London, NW5 1TL.
Tel: 020 7424 3462
Fax: 020 7485 3590
E-mail: massey@familyandparenting.org Icon: Email address

Last updated: 29th November 2007 at 11:11:53