Foundations For Families

Global Fund For Jesus (UK) partnering with Kingdom Preschool

Foundations for Families

1. Executive Summary

The disruption caused by COVID-19 in education, economy, family life, work patterns, social interactions and just about every area of society has exposed the weakness of the preschool development provisions, massive underspending by the government and lack of preschool family support. Numerous studies have demonstrated that money invested in preschool children significantly reduces the amount needed in later years due to them not reaching their full potential.

This project is focused on building foundations for families with preschool children that will give them the best opportunity to build successful and fulfilling lives. It will focus first on the preschool children’s development but will work extensively with parents and the extended family to ensure that the most conducive environment for development is fostered.

2. Background

The world has been dramatically impacted for over two years by COVID-19 as the author writes in April 2022. The disruption has affected many areas, the economy, education, family life, work patterns, and social interactions, in fact, just about every area of society. This document will focus on pre-school development and the parents/carers of preschool children.

Like every other country, the UK education system was disrupted by COVID-19. In the ‘lockdowns, ’ schools were closed with an ‘in-school provision’ for the most vulnerable children and ‘Key Worker’s’ children. However, it was not mandatory for any family to make use of this provision, and many did not. Education went on-line but very few schools made a good job of this and the most notable observation was that many schools were not good at making sure that work had been completed, yet alone to the right standards. In addition, some children could not access online learning due to lack of appropriate equipment or access to the internet This resulted in many children, where the parents were not motivated or unable to help them learn fell behind in their education. However, as bad as this was it was probably not the worst result of closed schools. There was a decline in mental well-being and a lack of social development due to the government's restrictions in their attempt to get the spread of COVID-19 under control. This has had a severe impact on the development of young children from birth to the time that they start school. This has resulted in primary schools now needing to concentrate less on achieving academic results because they need to apply their focus to social wellbeing.

The government has recently announced, 4th April 2022, that they will fund 75 Family Hubs because they have recognised the issues that have ensued due to the underfunding and scaling back of the Sure Start scheme.

The Iris Centre has the following to say about Early Childhood Environments, https://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/env/cresource/q1/p01/.

“Safe, responsive, and nurturing environments are an essential part of supporting the learning and development of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. Such environments also help to prevent challenging behaviours and serve as a core component of interventions for infants and young children with identified disabilities. According to the Division for Early Childhood Recommended Practices (DEC-RP):

“Environmental practices refer to aspects of the space, materials, equipment, routines, and activities that practitioners and families can intentionally alter to support each child’s learning across developmental domains.”

Unfortunately, many practitioners are unsure how to create environments that support their children’s learning across different age groups (e.g., infants, toddlers, pre-schoolers) and developmental domains (e.g., social, communication, cognitive, motor). Well-designed classroom* environments:

• Support responsive caregiving

• Foster independence and feelings of competence in young children

• Encourage staff efficiency

• Promote children’s engagement

• Decrease challenging behaviour

• Facilitate appropriate social interactions among children

• Provide structure and predictability.”

This is important because it’s the school and home environments that are critical for ensuring the effective development of preschool children.

Children normally go to nursery from the age of about 2 or 3 years old, where they learn to play and interact with other children. Learning to communicate, share toys and generally interact with children other than their siblings. The lockdowns only enforced closure on the nurseries for about 2 months, from the end of March 2020, offering a service to vulnerable children and ‘Key Worker’ families. However, when they reopened in June, many parents’ reluctance to let their children mix, for fear of spreading COVID-19 to medically vulnerable people, was that many children missed out on this stage of development and went straight into ‘Early Years’ education in a primary school at the age of 4 years. Therefore, they had missed out on the normal development process where basic skills are nurtured such as sharing, interaction, listening and communication skills, etc. which placed significantly new challenges on the primary education system because without this foundation in place the sophisticated building blocks of the national curriculum education system could not be applied. This observation highlights the importance of development in preschool years and underlines the benefits of enhancing this provision. It is clear that in the short-term the whole education system will need to be reviewed to find a way that it can be brought back on track and achieve the pre-pandemic educational results.

In addition, although the number of children being assessed with ‘special needs has dropped in recent years due to more accurate assessment techniques being introduced, the assessment and support systems for these children became completely overwhelmed and long waiting times before the pandemic became unacceptable waiting times. When children have special needs they benefit greatly from one-to-one support in the classroom which is practically non-existent in preschool settings due to lack of funding.

The pre-school underfunding has resulted in many settings having to focus on the education essentials detailed within their local government “provider agreements”, therefore support for families with pre-school children has not been nearly adequate when many of these setting want to be able to do more to support their local communities and recognise they are often the first port of call for many families. This coupled with the significant reductions in the Surestart programme, and the necessary one-to-one support required by children with special needs is practically non-existent. Also, this pre-school development sector underfunding by government resulted in many pre-school establishments shutting down which just makes the ongoing picture even more grim.

In the prelude to the latest Ofsted 2022-2027 strategy, they comment, “The early years workforce has also been hit hard. Thousands have left the sector since the first lockdown in 2020, while those who have stayed are often struggling to get by on low wages.” https://www.gov.uk/government/news/every-child-deserves-the-best-start-in-life.

Amanda Spielman, HM Chief Inspector, in her introduction to the 2022-27 Ofsted strategy said, “Each of us has only one childhood, and it shapes the rest of our lives. That’s why this strategy has a particular emphasis on giving all children the best possible start. Our work should help make sure a child’s earliest experience of education is as good as it can be. It should also help make sure that children who need extra help have the right support in place, both within and outside education.” https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/hmci-commentary-ofsteds-strategy-2022-to-2027.

With these two comments in mind and the information reported in the detailed Ofsted review, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/education-recovery-in-early-years-providers-spring-2022/education-recovery-in-early-years-providers-spring-2022, it is clear that additional focus and support is required to build firm Family Foundations, if we are going to achieve the societal development that is possible and should definitely be targeted for developed countries. Therefore, a pilot project is proposed working with the children and their families who use Kingdom Preschool in Whitfield, Dover, Kent.

3. Proposal

The Kingdom Preschool caters for 120 children offering progressive preschool within a building that is structured to cater for 5 age groups from 3 months to 5 years, but also has the added advantage of woodland on which they give opportunity for Forest School experiences.

The principle of Foundations for Families is to work with children, parents, and the extended family to establish a solid foundation for life. The Head of the Preschool will operate as a Supervising Consultant to ensure that meaningful connections with families are made and that the interventions bring about tangible benefits to the children. The project will follow Ofsted’s ethos of “Children First”.

A highly experienced Early Years Practitioner will be recruited to lead the project, manage the proposed 6 Early Years Practitioners, authorise specialist support services, liaise with the Kingdom Preschool to give one-to-one support for Special Needs children, arrange development activities for families, rent relevant space to operate in, develop the working methodologies and provide regular reports on progress and achieved benefits.

The 6 Early Years Practitioners will offer family and child support, which will take many forms such as parenting skills, family cooking, budgeting, family activities, singing, crafts, reading, forest school corporate parenting activities, in class support and many other family development orientated activities. Where there is a need for specialist support such as to help develop parenting skills, budgeting, development of economic independence, etc. then this specialist support will be requisitioned.

An administrator will support the team by booking appointments, helping with arranging activities, processing payments, booking rooms, and liaising with Kingdom Preschool staff and other administration required to ensure the smooth running of the project.

In summary, this activity will focus on the development of preschool children and their families to build strong foundations that will dramatically improve their future prospects and give them the skills to engage constructively with society as they move through the various stages of their life.

4. Financial

The expected annual budget is £474,449.33. We will be seeking funding for the first three years. However, we are endeavouring to establish sustainability during this period. We will do this by:

1. Demonstrating significant and demonstrable results encourage families to become regular supporters.

2. Establishing paid events and activities that facilitate some surplus.

3. Working in partnership with parents entrepreneurially to establish trading activity that will produce income for Foundations for Families.

4. Establishing regular support from people and organisations that see the value in Foundations for Families.

The funding will support the costs of expert project supervision, trained preschool project lead, 6 early years practitioners and administrative support. It will also cover room hire, travel, consumables, resources, activities for families and specialist support. The activities for families will be focused on developing the best environments for the effective development of preschool children. The specialist services are for outside people/organisations to offer budgeting, debt advice, special needs assessments, language skills intervention, parenting skills, economic empowerment along with other services that are identified during the pilot programme.

5. Conclusions

This project will make a huge difference to preschool children and their families and give these children every opportunity to reach their full potential. This will enhance their ability to grow into confident adults who will be able to contribute more ably to effective social development for many years.

You can make a difference by donating today to GLOBAL FUND FOR JESUS.