A supporting role

Children’s charity the National Children’s Bureau on how its new peer-to-peer programme can improve quality in your setting...

A new programme from the NCB, working in partnership with C4EO and supported by the DfE’s Improving Outcomes for Children, Young People and Families fund, is offering peer-to-peer support to local authorities.

Peer-to-peer support is not a new term but it can be a confusing one. This particular model is based on offering tailored support from those who have knowledge of the work area, have faced similar challenges, and have been trained to use evidence from the best available research to build on experience.

The programme allows all those working in the early years to access support from specialists trained and accredited by C4EO. Local authority officers, managers of settings or those coordinating groups within the workforce, can now access free help to improve the quality of early years provision and make a real difference for children. Specialists drawn from the NCB’s networks offer training and support from their own areas of expertise, including listening to young children, parental partnership and engagement, and supporting the home learning environment – all of which is particularly useful in the current context of service re-organisation and staff restructures.

Recent requests to the peer-to-peer support programme include, “Can you help us to review how we measure quality in our early years settings?”, Can you provide support for designing an early intervention strategy?”, and “Help us to offer coordination and support to settings within a reduced staff team”.

The support available is flexible and varied. The aim is to improve outcomes for children, but the assignments, each up to five days, might include improving leadership and performance, looking at what works well and what does not seem to be working, and helping staff to understand the requirements of the revised EYFS. For further information, please contact Priya Plowman .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or visit ncb.org.uk/ecu_network/peer_to_peer_sup port.aspx