I read with interest the musings of Dr Penelope Leach in the Saturday Times; the parenting guru first produced her book ‘Your baby and you’ 32 years ago and it has been a best seller around the world. However, she has recently published a new work as the result of seven years of research into childcare, entitled ‘Childcare Today: What We Know and What We Need to Know’.

I encountered Penelope Leach as an expert witness at one of the Government groups that I sat on last year and was fascinated to hear her observations on childcare, as I have certainly read her book and many articles that she has written more recently. Much to my relief, this new work concludes that good childcare won’t damage children! 

“What seems clear,” she says, “is this: women who are satisfied with their work, whether that is staying at home or out earning, are much better parents, happier people and healthier than those who are under any kind of compulsion. On the whole, over most of the studies, what we find is that childcare is good for children, not bad for them.”

It is interesting that she stresses the importance of close relationships with key carers, whether parents, grandparents or other carers, as this is a major part of the key person approach required within the new Early Years Foundation Stage. However, she does also say that parents have nothing to fear about other people looking after their children, whether paid or unpaid, as “Absolutely the most important thing to a child’s development is the responsive, sensitive relationship that forms with mother in the first year. But the thing that’s difficult to get across is that it doesn’t mean you have to be with mother 24 hours a day.” As Sarah Vine and Ruth Gled write in their article, “this means that the common concern that children will ‘love their nannies’ more, is unfounded. That sort of thing only happens where the child really has no solid, meaningful relationship with the mother.”

It is a pleasant change to see an article in the media which recognises the benefits of childcare and the importance of each parent making a decision which suits them and their children, without the lashings of guilt that are often implied as part of using paid childcare. We certainly think that we can offer a great deal to young children and their families; we very much hope you do too!

I have just been reading a really interesting article which was in the Times last week - if you would like to read the whole article visit http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article5524947.ece?dm_i=2MN,HP1,5SBSA,V9H,1

In it the importance of healthy eating in the pre-school years is highlighted, showing the lasting effects it can have on diet and nutrition in all children. Caroline Stacey writes:

It’s funny how people think biscuits, crisps and squash are suitable for children,” Dr Pauline Emmett, a nutritionist at the University of Bristol, says in a deadpan manner.

It seems obvious that catching them young - as the Jesuits say - is essential. Yet when it comes to nutrition there hasn’t been a concerted effort to instil good habits at the earliest opportunity. What children eat before they start school is no laughing matter, and Dr Emmett’s research gives more reasons why we should take early years nutrition even more seriously than school food.

Last year, research by the Institute of Education at the University of London, using Dr Emmett’s 17-year study of 9,000 children growing up in Britain, showed that what they eat from their earliest years matters more that their diet later on. In fact, when children are older nutrition seems to have less effect on attainment. Even when their diet subsequently improved, those who had eaten the most junk and processed food at the age of 3 still tended to do less well at school than more healthily fed children. “We were surprised by the results. We thought children’s current diet would be more important than their diet several years previously,” Dr Emmett says.

At The Old Station Nursery we have always taken food and nutrition very seriously - my former career was as a catering officer in the Army and having studied nutrition at university it has always been a great interest and passion.  All our cooks work to nutritionally balanced menu cycles and we are always modifying and updating our menus to try and introduce new foods, more fruit and vegetables and lower sugar options. However, this is always balanced against what the children enjoy, to make sure that they eat good meals and enjoy them.  We are just about to start work with some nutrition students from Oxford Brookes university, to review all the menus in detail and see how we can make further improvement. I will keep you updated on how the project goes, but in the meantime, do let your nursery managers know what you think about the current menus and how we could incorporate new dishes or old favourites.

Today the Daycare Trust responded to a survey by the Children’s Workforce Development Council on men in daycare settings.  The outline points from their response are as follows:

Responding to a survey published today by the Children’s Workforce Development Council which shows that 55% of parents want a male childcare worker for their nursery aged child, Daycare Trust joint chief executive Emma Knights said:

“Our recent report with the TUC ‘Raising the bar’, showed that the childcare workforce is 98% female.

“Far too many people still view working in childcare as women’s work, but the CWDC survey shows that parents, especially single parents, want to see more men working in childcare settings.

“To encourage more men to consider working in childcare the Government must take action to tackle the poor pay and conditions suffered by childcare workers. A report by the Low Pay Commission in 2007 claimed that in the childcare sector over 10 per cent of jobs were paid at the adult National Minimum Wage, and nearly 20% were paid below it.

“In Norway, the percentage of men working in Childcare stands at 8.8 per cent, at least four times the figure in England and Wales, because pay and status for childcare workers there are closer to parity with other children’s sector workers such as teachers.”

Within The Old Station Nursery Group we have a pitifully low percentage of men working with children, despite our best efforts to recruit them. Without exception, the men whom we have employed have been very popular with children, parents and staff, but it is very difficult to retain them on the salaries we are able to offer.  I completely agree that the whole way in which childcare is funded needs an overhaul, but until we are able to offer higher wages, I can’t see how we will retain many men within our field.  Let’s hope that one of the upsides of the recession might be people looking at alternative careers in areas that might not previously have been considered. We would certainly love to have a more mixed workforce, so if you know any men who might like to find out about a career in childcare, do send them our way.

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