Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire’s Workforce Development Buddying Scheme and
Early Language Lead Practitioners
In 2009 Nottinghamshire NCMA and the local authority were funded
through the the Department for Children, Schools and Families (now
Department for Education), via the National Strategies, to develop
a buddying scheme in the county. The scheme would facilitate peer
support and continuous professional development (CPD) opportunities
for all early years (EY) practitioners across the county supporting
the CWDC aim of strengthening the EY workforce.
The service we manage
The NCMA team began by identifying good practice in childminding
provision across Nottinghamshire and signing them up as potential
hosts for other EY practitioners to visit. Childminding hosts
identified the strengths they had to share and were added to a host
database. Other EY practitioners were encouraged to apply for a
buddying opportunity based on their needs and were then matched to
hosts who could support that need.
Results
A key success of the buddying programme has been the
cross-sector working that has been facilitated and the effective
professional relationships established which have continued beyond
the buddying experience. The scheme has now been mainstreamed in
the county. This has positively impacted on children due to better
transition between settings.
Childminders and other early years practitioners have been able
to learn about and have a better understand of each others' roles
and how their work links together to improve outcomes for children.
Childminders and EY practitioners from different parts of the EY
sector have been able to support and learn from each other.
The buddying scheme will be the platform from which we will
support newly registered childminders, disseminate good practice,
utilize existing knowledge and expertise and build upon previous
training.
There are now over 300 hosts and 400 buddies. Childminders’
Ofsted outcomes, after intensive buddying-support, have improved at
re-inspection.
Last year in partnership with Nottinghamshire Local Authority we
were fortunate in training eight childminders to become Early
Language Lead Practitioners (ELLPs). This September we trained a
further eight, however this time we will be relying heavily on the
buddying-scheme.
These childminders were selected from targeted areas in the
county, where there is an expectation of high numbers of two-year,
free entitlement children. Often the eligibility criteria for these
children to be on the two-year-project is language delay. Hence,
the buddying-scheme not only supports/sustains previous training
but will underpin national-incentives such as Every Child a Talker
(ECAT) of which the ELLP training is a part.
Nottinghamshire’s ELLP childminders, working in partnership with
parents, will help to ensure that the children in Nottinghamshire
have the speech, language and communication skills they need for
life.
The service team
This team contains nine members of staff providing services
to childminders that will meet their needs so that they can offer
high quality services to children, young people, their parents and
carers.
For more information, please contact Anne Soar, Service Manager.
Page last updated:
11/17/2011