Remembering who our clients are... the child and their families

I have been wanting to write a post about how important it is to remember who our clients are when working in early childhood. Everything we do must have the best interests of the child and the family at the core.

The reasons it has actually converted into making a post are two-fold. One, we are establishing new centre in my newly re-adopted hometown, Newcastle, Australia. I did grow up here but have spent most of my adult life/career in Sydney - but now I'm back. With this new centre, we have quite a few trainees and as it is a new centre, my Director and I are working really hard to make sure all of our practices put the child and their families first. My directors favorite line at the moment is "where is the child when this is happening?". Secondly, is my new partner (Drew) is having some issues with the preschool his son (my new step-son who's 3) is going to.

Engaging and learning with the child is our core job....
I know we have a job which involves a lot of 'extra tasks' such as cleaning, preparations, washing etc - but at no stage should your interactions with the children be compromised to achieve these tasks during your day. One of the easiest ways of doing this is getting the children involved. In my preschool room, the children help clean and set the tables for meal times, they wash their plates when they are finished and place their cutlery, cup (glass) and crockery (breakable) on the trolley (I would also like to point out here that the majority of breakages of our crockery and glass cups have been the staff - the children have been fantastically responsible). Very soon they will also be wiping over their place and their chair before stacking them - I have had children do this at other centres. The children also assist with sweeping the floors, making and stripping the beds and folding the washing. All these tasks are a really important way of building belonging and ownership at a centre as well as developing a child's ability to take responsibily for themselves and their community.

Are you appropriately using your staff?
Another way of dealing with these extra tasks is looking really closely at your staffing and how staff are allocated. If you do have a lot of 'not directly supervising/interacting with the children activities' then you have to look at your staffing arrangements to ensure your ratios are not being compromised. This can be as simple as sitting down with all staff and working out fair distribution of tasks during the day, utilising rest and other down times appropriately, and getting cleaners. If you are an owner or director of a centre and don't have cleaners - please think really hard about this - early childhood education and care is an important valuable job you should be employing your educators to educate and care for your children primarily not to clean the premises.

Listening to and addressing families' concerns?
The other situation with my partner and his child - is more to do with taking ownership when you have made a mistake and apologising to the family and then taking steps to ensure the mistake doesn't happen again. We all make mistakes -early childhood is a notoriously difficult job, we have huge workloads and a lot of expectations placed on us by families but that is not an excuse and if something gets missed, own up to it, apologise and then make steps to address the issue with staff and work with the family to ensure it doesn't happen again.

Building partnerships with families is a vital component of high quality early education and care and this is recognised in both our Early Years Learning Framework and the National Quality Standard - so it is critical to remember at all times the reason you work in this field and the people you are providing for are the children and their families.

What do you think?
How do you make sure the child and family are at the centre of all your practices?
If you are a parent or carer in a early childhood service, what have you observed that you think are good or bad practices in this respect?
Do you feel your concerns are adequately addressed if you raise an issue?

Update from NIFTeY meeting

I attended the NSW National Investment in the Early Years meeting this morning and thought I would provide an update of what's happening in Early Childhood Education and Care Sector.

Tonia Godhard reported on yesterday's meeting of key stakeholders with the new minister Adrian Piccoli.
The key points were:
- the sector now falls under the Department of Education
- the department will not be using the term 'child care' but rather Early Childhood Education and Care in recognition of this move.
- there will be a clear separation from child protection
- there will be no pushdown curriculum from the schools
- the separate Directorate for Children's Services will be headed by John Mason (who reports to Lesley Loble, Deputy Director-General Strategic Planning and Regulation).
-Department of Education preschools will remain under the Education Directorate
- the Minister is committed to the National Quality Framework but is concerned about the current reliability and validity of the tools.
- He also is committed to the 1 to 4 babies ratio and the introduction of 1 to 5 for 2-3 year olds as scheduled in NQS
- for preschools, he is aware of problems with RAM funding model and affordability and will establish a departmental review. He advised preschools to enroll for 2012 as they normally would as changes will not occur til 2013
- the teacher contribution scheme will commence in July but may not be ongoing.
- he is aware the sectors concern regarding the lack of consultation and is committed to improving this.

Other matters raised:

Children's Week
- will soon have a website up and running (will provide link when have it)
- as the trademark is now registered, it will now be necessary to register your event if you want to use logo and title
- there will be promotional posters available on the website

Working with children checks
- we discussed the need to move to a national streamlined system.

The NIFTeY conference is coming in July - it has a great line up if you are able to make it. The link is http://www.nifteyconference.com/

The grandparent carer initiatives from the government
- there will be an introduction of peer support networks
- grandparent advisors in some centrelink offices
- high density of grandparent carers on coast
- grandparent care provision for children during the day is underrecognised
- I will provide links to a number of reports when distributed if anyone is interested in reading further.

National Commissioner for Children and Young People
- senate enquiry underway. Report due August

Cultural competence issues:
- Reconciliation week is this week
- NAIDOC week early July
- important to engage local aboriginal organisations and actively engage with the issues and the community
- there is also Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children's day
- I will provide links to relevant websites when provided.

That the bulk of it and I will forward around the details for reports, websites and so on as soon as I have them.

Fighting for recognition

I have been spending the last few days in Perth with my partner who is a senior official of the Transport Workers Union. We are over here for the federal meetings.

As a result, I have been having lots of interesting conversations about politics and workers' rights (my previous life in HR sometimes helps and sometimes hinders these conversations).

The discussion of worker conditions in the early childhood field has come up a number of times. But the main theme has been that the wages and conditions for the industry are, to put it politely, abysmal.

One of the officials revealed to me that he was thinking of retraining and working in the field but he worked out as he was single and had rent and child maintenance to pay the income would not to be enough.

There has been a lot of talk recently about the workers in early childhood needing to stop being 'nice' (see the work of Sandra Cheeseman) and be honest about what we need in terms of a livable wage and a realistic measure of the work we do (so we are not doing everything at home on our own time).

One of the possible directions for my phd studies is a comparative study between what the nurses have achieved (and where they are going) and what we need to do to achieve a similar recognition of our skills. The Nurses have run a strong campaign to increase society's awareness of their skills, training and role within hospitals which has led to measurable improvements in wages and conditions and overall respect for the profession.

A key part of this is making the industry attractive and viable as a career choice for males (and single females) as well as the 'secondary' breadwinner.

Early Childhood Teachers study for 4 years at university only to come out and be paid very low wages. We need stand up and say this is not fair and our role is very important in society and should be recognized as such.



Posted by Wendy

"the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy" -Martin Luther King

Caring for (and paying) staff is just as important

I personally believe that you can not provide quality care if you do not provide a working environment where the staff are financially secure, recognised for their skills professionally, challenged intellectually and empowered.

Part of this is recognition that a vital part of convincing parents what is good about your centre is the fact that you look after your staff and provide working conditions that minimise their stress and enables recognition of their responsibilities which includes providing the staff with time (at work and paid for) to complete everything they need to get done.

Fortunately my new workplace is pretty much on board with this philosophy - so it is a vast improvement!

I think we are completely underestimating parents if we think they cant understand that we too need decent wages and conditions to work and be happy in our jobs (and the subsequent impact it has on their children and the care we can provide)  - as such I hope you all planning intensely on how you are going to participate in the IEU Teachers are Teachers Blue Day.

I know it will be much easier (hopefully) for those of you who work at council, community and not for profit centres because of higher union density and higher acceptance of workers right to organise so if you have any inspiration for our fellow teachers in the private sector I would love to hear your stories.

For those of us in private sectors, all we are asking for is a recognition of our education and skills its not unreasonable and all research points that early childhood teachers in long day care centres make a very significant impact on the quality of care for their children - and without adequate pay we will not remain in the sector leading to a continuation of the incredibly high turnover of staff which is unsettling for their children and everyone.

Don't be scared get up and fight for what you are entitled for!! its the only way change happens.

Moving on - Leaving my chickens behind

I'm about to embark on a new adventure and start a new job on Monday.

However, sadly, this means that I will be leaving my lovely children, parents and colleagues.

In my old career I use to do a lot of contracting so I'm reasonably used to moving onto new pastures (luckily, facebook helps me keep in contact).

But this is the first time I have been with these children and families for over 8 months. I have built a wonderfully close relationship with the children and their parents it will be a shame to leave them. I know what their (many) faces mean, I can predict their behaviour and I know what they love and what makes them laugh - I love turning up to work and hearing "hello Wendy" echo around the hall from the toddler room and my room.

Unfortunately, my particular working conditions meant I had to move on.

I have written all of my children a little card and been giving them out throughout the week to let them know I will miss them and that I love them. I tried to include something about their personalities in the card to make it unique for them

However, it is tricky territory - at all times I need to ensure that I am not telling parents or the children to come to my new centre.

In HR, we call it restraint of trade - basically if you move on you can't poach your clients (usually for 6mths but if you are in a very senior position it can be for years). There doesn't seem to be anything like this in the industry but out of respect for my boss I have self imposed it.

How do you manage moving on to a new job?