It seems strange that in 2024 parents feel the need to lead a campaign about healthy food, but with the help of the Children’s Food Campaign at Sustain, that’s exactly what they are doing. Indeed, they managed to get to meet members of parliament to share their manifesto with them.

In this podcast I speak to Barbara Crowther, Children’s Food Campaign Manager at Sustain and parent ambassador Jaynaide Powis about their comprehensive polling of over 2,000 parents conducted by Savanta and the Children’s Food Campaign which has helped determine the biggest challenges faced by parents in the current food system and their top priorities for change.

Listen as we explore topical questions such as:

1. Is it time to stop our snacking culture?
2. Do we need to go back to the days when we all learned to cook in the home economics class at school
3. Should nurseries have free nursery food and should all chefs be trained with credible Chef qualification such as our degree from the Early Years Chef Academy ?
4. Do we need statutory food guidance for nurseries and childminders?
5. Should Ofsted be inspecting food in nurseries and childminders?
6. What further policies are needed to support them.

Getting into your Ofsted Groove!

In this podcast I talk to Wendy Ratcliff and Sam Sleeman-Boss from Ofsted about the Big Listen, refreshed handbooks, new complaints procedure and the research review series and how they are feeling about the Ofsted Academy and the future of Ofsted. While there are some things they cannot answer yet, like how will Ofsted reshape, I am holding them to the promise of a research report on babies especially with the expansion of childcare to include little babies of 9-months-old.

The conclusion of the conversation confirms that we need to continue with our OBC to keep engaged with our regulator so we have a voice in what is often a national debate that only focuses on Ofsted in schools.

The next London OBC is 31st of October, get your ticket here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/london-obc-october-2024-tickets-1007508564237

Listen to this to help you get into the Ofsted groove.

Slow Pedagogy

During Covid, the LEYF staff running our 15 nurseries for key workers had a call with me at 3pm every day. I looked forward to our chats and it wasn’t long until they we talking about how the reduction in numbers of children, time to play, less curricular demands and fewer wider issues was positively impacting on the children and they in turn were slowing down the pedagogy to allow the children time to just enjoy being children.

Let’s think about slowing down early childhood in the world of fast living and undesirable excess is the message. Let’s ignore the government or business ethos of targets and consumerism. It isn’t working! No one is satisfied!

Have a listen and tell us what you think.

Baby, It’s Time

Do you think babies are a focus of care and education policy enough? Do we have a baby policy blind spot? We think so!

This is the subject of my conversation with Sally Hogg, Senior Policy Fellow at the Centre for Research on Playing Education, Development and Learning better known as PEDAL.

Why has this issue become so important now? Well, because of the speed of the childcare expansion. From September, babies from nine months will be able to access a nursery place. Getting it right from conception to two years is more crucial than at any other stage of learning. The brain development in babies is startling. Just imagine the baby brain as a firework of synaptic connections, fizzing across brains and forming strong cerebral pathways.

If you are interested in the Under 2's and what makes great practice, listen to my conversation with Sally Hogg and share it widely. You know the drill!

It’s fitting that this podcast is being aired on International Children’s Day because Sir Al is a huge advocate for children over his very busy and noteworthy 50 years. His message is powerful, and he pulls no punches about his frustration over the failure of our country to take seriously the importance of children, and particularly those in the Early Years.

“Every child should be given the resources to achieve her or his full potential. Now, why don't we have that being articulated, let alone actioned? It is utterly dire in my view.”

He despairs at the serious erosion of the basic humanity of the caring services and his new purpose is putting compassion back into compassionate care that we provide for people, especially children.

“There is a mismatch between our wonderful science and all of our services and the dismal failure of politicians to recognise the importance of children “.

“…chiselled in letters of stone over every Department of State should be this. We need healthy, educated, creative, resilient and happy children, with the life skills to become the productive adults of the future and the competent parents of the future.”

Reflecting on Every Child Matters which he describes as the world's best policy programme for children (one for which he proudly shared across the world) – it was the brainchild of the Labour Party, then destroyed by a triple whammy. The Coalition government dismantling it without any serious debate, then austerity followed (and its dreadful impact on families), followed by COVID. Effectively, it was the destruction of the world's best policy programme for children which he despairs does not appear to be top of the Labour manifesto.

We discuss the low birth rate, the old age dependency ratio between working adults and the elderly, fertility rates, immigration, the science of attachment, brain development, synaptic connection, his book The British Betrayal of Childhood and much more…

Listen to his call to action and get involved. Start by listening and sharing this podcast…

In this podcast with Prue Leith, we discover that Prue’s approach to life is summed up by her autobiography, “I'd Try Anything Once” and the more she talks the more you believe it! From posh white girl in South Africa to judge on Bake Off, food dominates Prue’s career. Her passion is undimmed as is her patience with the stupidity of politicians. She provides an entertaining but thoughtful summary of her efforts to put small children's health and access to food right at the centre of modern politics. We might even end up with a Masterchef for Nursery cuisine.

Listen to Prue’s stimulating take on what we should do!

“I see myself as the Benjamin Button of Education” In conversation with Dr Ger Graus.

The power of play is recognised within the Early Years sector as essential to children’s development. Playing is a child’s right and is our main teaching tool. As Friedrich Froebel said so eloquently back in 1837, “Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child's soul.”

Yet today, we are limiting children’s opportunity for play more and more. I still hear people’s stories of how children as young as three are told to ‘Finish your work and then you can go and play’ or ‘you are behind with your work, so you miss playtime’.

My podcast guest is Dr Ger Graus OBE who was the first director of KidZania, which went on to be one the fastest growing global educational entertainment brands, with 28 locations around the world. I first met him in 2016 when I visited KidZania to see how we could adapt the experiences for children aged three and four. We were defeated by the safeguarding implications of letting children have the freedom to explore without adult supervision.

For Ger, Early Years is not a place to drop off a child for a few hours to get a reprieve for parental responsibility but a place of education and care, with staff doing their best to educate children. A child is everyone’s responsibility! He argues that our job is to create an education which helps children navigate the technological revolution. To do that, Ger is keen that we agree what 10 experiences every four-year-old should have.
What do you think?

According to Barnardos, it is estimated that there are up to 310,000 children every year with a parent in prison in England and Wales. And for those children, this can lead to poor physical and mental health and significant trauma, especially as some of them will have witnessed some of the criminal activity or even the arrest of their parent. It is not unheard that no one collects a child from school because they have been convicted at a court hearing earlier in the day. Can you imagine the impact on a child?

These conversations led to an introduction to Andy Keen-Downs, CEO of PACT. He described the125 year-old children’s charity within the prison service as a well-kept secret! In this podcast he tells us more about PACT and the National Prisoners Helpline 0808 808 2003 which provides lots of support and information for families and had 30,000 calls over the past 12 months: Prisoners' Families Helpline (prisonersfamilies.org). There is some support for older children and professionals: For children | Prison Advice and Care Trust and For professionals | Prison Advice and Care Trust but this podcast is all about what we can do in the Early Years to help. Here is a taster statistic that will make you think!

Six out of 10 boys with a father in prison will follow their father into prison, and they're more likely to go to prison than to go to university.

One of the LEYF managers recounted a story that sadly supported this statistic. She remembered one of the children aged 4 announcing that her Dad was in jail and when she grew up she would go to jail too. She said:

“I will be a burglar because I am very good at creeping around and climbing”

At LEYF we have now developed a pack for the Early Years sector in collaboration with PACT to help people respond when they know or suspect that a child’s parent may be in prison. It is such a sensitive situation requiring deep levels of compassion to navigate because people remain very ashamed of the situation. We know that when families are able to support the prisoner , reoffending drops by 39%, which is significant for the children living in those families. Our job is to remember that we must never write off children of prisoners and reject the expression of ‘the apple doesn't fall far from the tree’.

Every child has promise and if you believe this and you want system change then listen to the podcast!