The EYFS prompted me to completely rethink the role of key workers. At our training day I led a discussion on key workers and we decided that first of all it would be better to describe the relationship in terms of a 'key person', reflecting that the role should be about the people and less about the work involved.
I felt we had been tokenistic in our approach to key workers and sometimes it was more about what was convenient to staff than what was best for the children. We did a comparison between what the role was and how we would really like it to work. I asked staff to look at many things from nappy changing to meal times to parental communication, and identified several ways we could improve the outcomes for the children by changing our approach, making the relationship between the children and their key person at the centre of all we do.
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