Agenda item

Councillor Cheryl Barnard, Portfolio Holder for Children and Young People, Kathryn Bouchlaghem, Early Years Manager, Katherine Crossley, Early Years Project Officer and Nicholas Lee, Director of Education Services attended the meeting to outline the Council’s response and progress to address the recommendation arising from a Local Government Association Peer Challenge carried out with Nottingham City Council in 2019 to develop a collaboratively produced citywide Early Years Strategy, with a particular focus on speech, language and communication.  They highlighted the following information:

a)  The Council is working with partners to develop a workable Speech, Language and Communication (SLC) Strategy for the city. This has involved establishing and understanding what interventions are being used across the city.

b)  It has been clearly identified (pre pandemic) that some of Nottingham’s children are not developing their speech and language skills to the best of their ability.  This can impact on all of a child’s life skills, including attachment, attainment, offending, good mental health, wellbeing, employment opportunities etc. The pandemic has impacted on the ability to engage with some young children, but the Early Year’s Foundation sector has been open throughout and available for parents to use.

c)  Partnership working with other cities (Derby and Leicester) has enabled Nottingham to learn from others, for example the Council aspires to extend its age range for SLC work from 0-5 to 25, as Leicester has done. 

d)  It is hoped to replicate across the city, at low cost or no cost, the work with Small Steps Big Changes (National Lottery funded programme of activities designed to give children the best start in life) in Aspley, Bulwell, Hyson Green, Arboretum and St Ann’s.

e)  The Peer Reviewers are due to return in the summer this year, by which time the SLC strategy will at least be in draft form if not further progressed.  The Health and Wellbeing Board is responsible for overseeing the work to develop the strategy.

f)  There are lots of really positive programmes of work across the city in schools, community settings etc, which support SLC.  Going back to basics, eg using the first 100 words, is considered key in how to move forward to a workable citywide partnership strategy.

g)  Early Years colleagues are working with Derby and Leicester to centralise SLC resources for the city and to support parents, carers and professionals to navigate what is available, so that they can help children to develop their SLC skills.  Information has been centralised in one place, called the Balanced System pathway, providing clear guidance and support.  The Committee was shown a short video which introduces the Balanced System pathway and the range of resources on offer. This tool is being widely shared.

h)  Work is ongoing with partners from birth onwards to encourage parents and provide them with the confidence to take up a free childcare early education place to enable SLC work to begin as early as possible.

In response to questions from the Committee and in the subsequent discussion the following points were made:

i)  Inequalities within the workforce are known to have an impact on early years’ development. Graduates working within an early years setting can have a significant impact on SLC.  While funding previously used to employ graduates in such work is no longer available, in Nottingham approximately 60% of early years’ settings within the private, voluntary and independent (PVI) sector, have a graduate-led workforce.  Within the schools’ early years sector it is 100%. 

j)  Drilling down on ward and community data shows that creative language and writing skills for some boys have slipped below the national average. The Council has invested in focused workforce development training to enable support for boys’ development of fine motor skills to aid this.  In some schools there has been evidence of an improvement in boys’ engagement.

k)  The department monitors hard data as part of its responsibility for statutory reporting.  EYFSP (Early Years Foundation Stage Profile) data is the first data captured and held on a child’s education. However, the provision of data to the local authority is not currently mandatory for all settings, eg schools.  It is part of the Council’s strategy to engage with all schools, including academy trusts, to build robust data back to 2015. 

l)  Work is ongoing to link the health and education 2.5 year-old checks. It is essential to share data with partners as the collection of data and forensic analysis improves, to join up the education and health sectors (the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework, based on education, and the Healthy Child Programme) to tackle inequalities. 

m)  Attainment and the ability to thrive in education have a significant impact on behaviour and the ability to navigate life beyond school, impacting on worklessness. Colleagues are keen to see the work with young children extending as part of the SLC Strategy.

n)  The levels of deprivation in Nottingham have enabled the Council to access funding for the work with Derby and Leicester, which experience similar widespread challenges with SLC across their cities.

o)  The Council worked closely with health visitors and speech and language therapists to develop the ‘100 words’ programme.  It will now be helpful to reinvigorate that through a range of communications to schools, early years’ settings, parents’ forums etc. 

p)  A childcare sufficiency audit has shown that there are enough spaces for under 5 year-olds.  The best outreach tool is to engage with parents and carers, as well as schools, to promote the benefits of going to an early years setting. More work needs to be carried out with Health Visitors to formalise promotion toolkits.

q)  To improve the time spent on waiting lists for speech therapy, the Council is working on both training its workforce and how services are commissioned. This is being looked at by the Health and Wellbeing Board. Linked to this is the importance of engaging parents and carers in the Balanced System pathway to empower them to support their child.

r)  The Dolly Parton Library free book per month for under 5 year-olds is a resource on the pathway and has been embraced widely, including by the PVI sector, to support parents with reading to their child and help to identify literacy issues, which can then be addressed.

s)  The overarching vision for SLC would enable work to be extended to support older young people and adults whose learning and progress has been/ is impacted by difficulties with SLC. It was agreed that it would be useful to look at this particularly at a future Committee meeting.

t)  Councillor Barnard agreed to distribute a copy to Committee members of ‘Talking About A Generation’, which reviews recent developments in policy and practice of SLC on health and wellbeing, educational progress and employability beyond school.

The Chair thanked contributors and requested an update on progress with the SLC strategy, including work with older young people and adults, in one year’s time.