The childcare and early years education sector is a priority and it’s about time people in high places treat it as such. The government needs to prioritise our children’s educational foundation as relevant and afford it commensurate funding.
Recently, there was a Childcare and Early Education Week that took place between the 24th and 28th of January 2022, which was ran by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) – the group was formed to support and promote the childcare and early education sector.
The aim of last week’s proceedings was to raise awareness of the Early Years Sector amongst Members of Parliament, peers, decision makers and influencers. All in effort to help build strong relationships between early years educators and their local MP’s. The APPG also wanted to celebrate the incredible work educators do, and put a particular highlight in the significant role they played and continue to play amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The Early Years staff has been tirelessly helping with educating and supporting vulnerable children and the children of key workers – allowing them to keep the country running throughout the pandemic. To read more about this, press this link.
Operating in this sector has its own obstacles, and without adequate funding, it is really hard to give all the children the premium care they deserve. Which is why we are also part of the All Party Parliamentary Group council that lobbies for that to change. We perform surveys every year to track our progress – from the children we care for to our apprentices. It takes an entire village to raise children and the same is true with our nurseries as well. While one might ignorantly assume that taking care of children is a female vocation, that could not be further from the truth. Our team is a well diversified group of people, even men are now the new age caregivers.
We are breaking the mould when it comes to the traditional definition of what a caregiver is or how they should look like.
