Meeting Our Local MP
This week, the wonderful setting Manager, Jo, and I met with our local MP, Duncan Baker, to discuss some of the pressing issues facing the Early Years sector today.
I feel I need to caveat this post. We live in a tumultuous political moment (zeitgeist if you will) and this post is not about whether you support the Conservatives or not, or even how you rate Duncan Baker as an MP. It is about making sure that the individual who represents us in parliament, understands the level of the issues facing the sector. So please do not comment on this about party politics because the important issue here, in this post and for us as a nursery, is about having our MP understand the extent of the issues.
The meeting was called following a recent incident in which social services and other official bodies did not come through for one of our families in a moment of crisis. The result was that members of staff had to go well above and beyond to ensure the safety of a whole family. This took an emotional toll on the staff involved, and from a business perspective, had a financial impact as we brought in additional staff to cover our setting ratios.
When I learned that the official bodies had failed the families and failed us, I felt angry and knew we had to do something. However, in discussing this with the senior team at the setting it became apparent that this was just the tip of the iceberg. The numerous cases and various bodies that have fallen short of their remit, pushing the slack onto the nursery staff is horrifying. And I have no doubt that our MPs across the country have absolutely no idea how bad it is.
Following my post earlier this year, about Ofsted ignoring the Early Years in their pause for mental health training, a key theme emerging is how the Early Years simply gets forgotten in all discussions of education and children in general. In fact during our discussion Duncan Baker talked about a Bill he is working on getting through Parliament which aims to have education on Autism made a mandatory part of all teacher training - he acknowledged that he had not considered Early Years in his proposals. He was incredibly gracious in this acknowledgement, but it really does show how little Early Years features in the general understanding of the education timeline and the importance of the work our staff are doing.
Prior to the meeting, Jo and I discussed what we really wanted to achieve from this, knowing that one man is not going to be able to change the funding landscape for us. There would be no point in demanding answers or specific action during this meeting, but we need our representative to understand our daily battles to stay afloat.
Of course we discussed the underfunding, the difficulty in attracting and retaining staff, the low wages, and the constant need for fundraising and grant applications to stay above water. We talked about the impact of the new two-year funding and our expansion as a setting to accommodate not only the new children but to provide space for the numbers of children with additional needs that we are seeing. We took Mr Baker on a tour of the setting, showing him the changes we’ve made and the plans still to be worked on when we’ve raised the money, particularly noting how important these changes are to keep the children and staff safe in the face of the additional needs.
And this here is the key factor that links everything together. As a setting we notice the way in which Early Years settings are ignored most acutely when it comes to our children and families with additional needs. If we were a school, and one of our families were dealing with the Police or social services or other bodies, we would be contacted as a courtesy and to make sure we were serving that child/family in the correct way. As an Early Years setting we are not given the same courtesy. A child in our care may have been involved in a domestic abuse situation and we would have no idea unless the child or parent disclosed that to us. And this is not the only way in which the lines of communication are not extended to Early Years settings.
This is also why I’m keen to use the term “additional needs” in my own fundraiser. Because I am well aware that for our setting, complex behaviours arise not just from physical or educational needs but social ones as well. Whilst we have SENDCO and other trained staff we really need all our staff training across all areas, and our setting making safe across all strands of these additional needs.
Roughly 20% of the children going through our setting come from domestic abuse homes and that number has risen steadily. On top of that we have our children with SEN, who more often now are not gaining places at the specialist SEN schools and who are deferring entry to school and remaining with us for an additional term or even year.
Overall I am really pleased with how our meeting with Duncan Baker went. I feel that Jo and I were well understood and that Mr Baker has come away with a greater understanding of the challenges we face. I hope he will advocate for us in Parliament and when faced with questions and decisions over Early Years funding. I will also be remaining in contact with him as we move forward and continue to raise awareness for the battles we face, for as long as he remains our elected MP.
And yes, I am still fundraising and you can support the fundraiser by donating through Go Fund Me - I’ve still got 6 more hikes to go (one this weekend!) and an awful lot more training! Thank you to everyone who has donated so far, I’ve just tipped past the £600 mark!
