Raising Awareness
Over the years the Early Childhood Project has worked hard to raise awareness, get families and children’s needs listened to, acted on and lives changed.
Underpinning all our work is Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). This formally enshrines a child’s right to play and the right to engage in other recreational activities and the arts.
We recognise and celebrate many cultural and religious festivals throughout the year which helps to raise the awareness and understanding of unfamiliar cultures amongst our many participants. In any week, we may have an average of 35 different languages spoken by our toy library users. People feel valued, respected and take pleasure in sharing their highdays and holidays with each other which in turn fosters the good relations within our Toy Library community and beyond.
Influence and Activism
We set high standards in all our early years play work; observing, planning, resourcing and evaluating children’s progress through their play and families growing knowledge and understanding of their child’s development.
We also take pride in showing by good example how to welcome people into what starts as a room full of strangers and leave feeling part of the action and an integral participant. Simple things like workers, volunteers, children and their carers wearing a name label and tissues and wipes being available in all sessions have permeated throughout the Children’s Centres in Brighton and Hove, and beyond!
Over the years we have worked closely with the Working Group Against Racism in Children’s Resources and the Early Years Trainers’ Anti-Racist Network and the Pre-school Learning Alliance. At the same time, thinking and training around equalities issues took off, mainly due to the changes brought about by The Children Act. We have run equalities issues courses for early years workers and childminders right across our region.
We have worked with groups of trainee teachers on many areas they were interested in. The Infants Teachers Maths Support Group met for about three years, working to cut through decades of gender stereotyping in maths books and lessons and Mandy Lewis and Katie Burg met to write an education pack for 5 to 8 year olds for Oxfam around the topic of water.
Our Community
We have often got involved with ideas, movements, national and local strategies that we know could be, or should be important in the lives of young children and their families.
We have always developed our own community with the families with whom we work, many living miles, hours, continents away from their own extended families. Community work relies on good local knowledge, very experienced and skilled workers, excellent communication with colleagues and the families and treating everyone with respect. Put all of that in the mix and trust grows. Without that, communities do not thrive as they should.
We have influence in the city that seems far bigger than our charity’s size! We have an excellent reputation, work hard to support families and influence local government strategies and plans and have represented the ‘hard to reach’ on many committees and networks in the city, from the Brighton Borough Council Parks and Recreation Committee, as the lead on early years play; representing childrens’ needs on various womens’ and equalities committees and even now we help monitor the council’s Equality Impact Assessments each year alongside the annual budget.
We have met with numerous OFSTED inspectors, raising the importance of services actually meeting children’s individual needs. We represented the early years services in the city on the influential Fairness Commission in 2015; some of the no cost suggestions we put forward have ‘gone mainstream’.
Lifetime Achievement
In 2014 Clair Barnard, our Project Co-ordinator, was given the Community Works Lifetime Achievement Award for community activism. Community Works connect charities, volunteers and businesses so they can make our society and local areas better. But all the workers and Trustees involved with the Project keep themselves up to date and well informed; we all have a role in our communities supporting children and their families to thrive and be the very best they can be.