Revised EYFS: Gearing up for the challenges of delivery

Speaking at Talk To Your Baby’s annual conference in London last week, she said she recognised anxieties about aspects of the draft framework.

‘Without the support of National Strategies and other resources, delivery of change will be challenging and we should not pretend that is not the case,’ she said.

‘However, the revised framework is manageable and is designed to encourage practitioners to stand back and reflect. More work needs to be done on how we work with parents and make them partners in the delivery of the EYFS.’

Dame Clare underlined that while the revised EYFS could ‘stand alone’ more easily than the existing framework, it was important that local authorities gave careful thought to how they supported it.

‘There is also an important role for our colleagues in health to work alongside us, and the health and wellbeing boards have a key role. Local authorities need to engage in discussions with the sector as a way of providing a strategic overview, particularly when there are fewer resources around.’

Viv Bennett, deputy chief nursing officer at the Department of Health, reported that 1,300 health visitors are currently being trained as part of the Government’s drive to raise the existing workforce of 8,000 in the UK.

‘Key challenges over the coming months are to open up over 500 new jobs for health visitors and for the DoH to carry out joint work with the DfE on the two year-old checks,’ she said.

On the subject of children’s centres and ongoing cuts, Dame Clare stressed that these needed to be carefully mapped to outcomes.

‘Children’s centres are vital and local authorities need to carry out impact analyses of how the loss of them will affect local families, particularly with regard to early intervention. It is important they don’t rely on parents and carers to come in and run critical services. As children’s centres become more targeted, greater professional skills will be needed.’

Closing the conference, Jean Gross, communication champion, said that this year’s National Year of Communication – Hello – had succeeding in raising awareness and fuelling new projects which would be ongoing.

‘Online support from the Communication Trust is still there,’ she said. ‘On the back of the campaign the Government has put some money into a new early learning training programme which has produced strong outcomes for children from birth to two. It testifies to the need for every children’s centre to have a highly skilled language professional, and as a model we believe it will grow.’