Children’s Minister Beverley Hughes has announced a ‘Think Fathers’ campaign to dispel the myth that dads are the ‘invisible parent’. Research the Government published this week shows that public, health and family services across the board need to go much further in recognising and working with fathers. Kick-starting a debate at the Family and Parenting Institute, Beverley Hughes wants to build up the expectation of fathers’ involvement within public services - from birth, through children’s centres in the early years and in schools - and within society more generally.

With research showing that children who grow up with strong father figures are less likely to get into crime, take drugs; grow up with mental health problems or struggle to form relationships, the Children’s Minister announced that the Government will be working with the Fatherhood Institute to look at how to better support dads and encourage them to play an active role in their families.

To push forward the debate on active fatherhood, the campaign will:

- For the first time to bring together employers, children’s services, practitioners and voluntary organisations to look at what more can be done to give dads the support they need

- Publish a ‘Think Fathers’ guide to help children’s services to improve the way they work with dads

- Hold a ‘Think Fathers’ summit to encourage public services, professionals and the voluntary sector to look distinctively at fathers -

not just generically at parents- Launch an online ‘Dads Dialogue’, with fathers, mothers and children creating a user-generated collection of views, feelings, anecdotes and memories about fatherhood, family policy, challenges and successes.

Within our nurseries we are always looking at new ways to work with parents and to provide the best communications that we can. Is there anything that you think we could do to engage better with both parents?  I am always encouraged by how many Dads regularly drop off or collect their children from nursery and in many locations we see as many Dads as Mums. However, we understand that working patterns can make it difficult for some parents to be involved, so we could run evening or weekend events if there was a demand for this. Do let me know what you think.

The Daycare Trust have just published a report called ‘Raising the bar; what next for the early childhood education and care workforce’. This report explores how pay in the early years sector is lower than in other sectors and the possibility of wide spread research into pay to inform a payscale. Not surprisingly, it concludes that pay is generally low and that this is at least partly the reason why so few men follow careers in childcare. Most of us within the sector completely agree that salary levels should be higher, but with tight margins this would inevitably result in higher fees, unless there is some supply-side funding from the Government.

 

The National Day Nurseries Association responded to the report by saying: ‘This report reflects how early years practitioners are doing a fantastic job for often little pay. Day nurseries fully recognise the need to raise salaries following achievement of qualifications and inline with other sectors, and would dearly like to reward their staff, but as the report highlights this cannot be achieved without direct Government intervention. In recent years, the sector has developed clear progression routes and career opportunities, yet pay has been unable to keep pace with this. As this report shares, it is important that experienced and qualified staff are better rewarded, but we would like to stress that money is not the only motivator.

 

What do you think? Should the full costs of childcare be passed on to parents, or do you think tax payers should be helping to subsidise national childcare, as working parents benefit the economy and children should all be given equal access to early education?  I’d love to hear your thoughts…..

It’s been a busy week around the company, with OFSTED carrying out a no-notice inspection at our Gainsborough nursery on Tuesday and Thursday.  We only took over the running of this small nursery at Easter time and since then the staff team have worked really hard at setting up a baby room, as we have managed to extend the nursery so that we can offer more places. They seem to be really popular and we are filling up nicely. I had a lovely e-mail today from a parent of a baby who comes to the nursery, saying how delighted she is with the service that the staff provide. It’s so nice to get some positive feedback and hear when we are getting it right. However, if we get it wrong, we also want to hear and I am having a major drive on customer service over the next few months, so I’d love to hear how we can really ‘wow’ all our customers.

We also recieved the inspection report today from OFSTED for our Filkins Nursery, which followed the inspection there back in the first week of September. The new inspection framework is obviously taking a while to bed in, as usually reports are produced much more quickly, but in this instance we were very happy to wait as the final result is really pleasing. Louise and her team were congratulated for ensuring that ‘children’s care needs are well addressed by the caring and skilfull staff team’. The report also states that ‘children are highly involved in purposeful and meaningful play’ - good news for anyone who was concerned that the EYFS would be the end of ‘learning through play’, if the media hype over a ‘nappy curriculum’ was to be believed!

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