End of school year 2020/21

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I have just finished work with my group of nurture children for this academic year. Like everyone in education in September 2020, I had no idea how this year would work out. My colleagues and I work with children who have been recognised as having additional social, emotional, mental health needs. I was pretty fearful in September about how we would navigate through the year, how the bubbles would work, how the children would respond to the staff mask-wearing and constant hand washing and not seeing other children or staff. But we did all survive! And actually, most of the children thrived. At the end of every year, we write an end of year report about our work, we reflect on where the children were and how they are now. At the end of every year, I am always amazed and moved by the progress we see, but this year feels more significant. This year’s group missed out on massive amounts of preschool education before starting; many of them have missed time from schools in the first two terms due to bubbles going down with covid isolation and then further lockdowns in the winter. All of these are hugely significant. My colleagues and I measure our children’s progress on how settled they are, can they now play with others, can they begin to become regulated when they have a regulated adult with them, can we understand their speech and language, are they now talking to us and others, can they take part in class for some of the time with their peers, do they have an emotional understanding and vocabulary. The answer is yes, a massive YES. And that feels brilliant and quite remarkable.

As ever this year, I have seen teachers and teaching assistants and Sencos and headteachers doing a fantastic job. We don’t say thank you enough to the education staff; the last 18 months have been the most challenging time for everyone in education. My hope is education staff can finally stop and rest for some time over the summer, I know there is still much they will need to do for the new term, but my hope is they can stop for a time but also I hope they can feel appreciated and thanked for their amazing work.

In the last few weeks, I have had a new book published with Routledge, it is called supporting children with social, emotional and mental health needs in the early years. The book offers practical ideas and suggestions on how to support children with SEMH needs

early years, early years staff, mental health, SEMH needs, supporting children mental health, wellbeing

Lost words

I haven’t written a blog post in months, my winter was ok, but on reflection, I think during terms 3 and 4, I was in coping mode and had so little headspace to think and reflect, I felt I had nothing to say. The Easter break, getting back to my regular swimming routines, a bit of travelling around and seeing people and the sunshine has hugely boosted my energy, thinking capacity, and mood.

This first week back in term five has been a delight with the children. This week we have been bug hunting; it is a gentle activity to do, it encourages children to notice, slow down; it’s a mindful activity. It’s also a helpful activity to link to feelings and emotions. There are often comments about being a bit scared of specific bugs and noticing what bugs do when they are afraid of us. We talk about how we feel and how we know when we are scared and what we do. One boy told me he was scared of spiders as they might jump out at him, and if they are hairy, they are poisonous; I reassured him we wouldn’t find a poisonous spider here. For this boy, telling me something scared him was a positive step. Until now, he often shows that he is strong, nothing scares him, and we were able to talk about how it is ok to be scared and what we can do when we are afraid how it can be important to notice when our body is telling us we are scared.

I noticed with lots of the children and their friends that joined in was the lost words. They didn’t know the names of bugs; some children thought flies were bees, another child thought worms were snakes, children thought a dandelion was a sunflower or a buttercup, children didn’t know the name for a slug or a beetle. At first, I thought this was one small group, but then I saw it repeated in 8 schools over the week. It has made me wonder, is this unique to the children I am working with?. I wonder if this is Covid related?. Is it due to the enormous amount of time children have missed out on their last year of the nursery? Or the lack of opportunity for them to be outside and explore the awe and wonder around. I would be interested to know if others have noticed this.

For the next few weeks, we are going to continue thinking about bugs, learning names of bugs and flowers and what we see around us; I am hoping to replace those lost words for the children.

Nature and children’s wellbeing

This week it is children’s mental health week in the UK. I know many schools, nurseries and organisations are paying particular attention to the subject this week. I must admit mental health weeks leave me feeling slightly uneasy, our attention needs to be on mental health and wellbeing all the time, not just as an intense look at it over a week. We need to learn how to embed mental health conversations; creating a positive practice around wellbeing and mental health to underpin all of our work.

This term, in my daily nurture sessions with children, I am trying to use the outdoors and connecting with nature a lot more. I have been trying to make sure that all nurture activities when I am in school are outdoor-based and for the children at home, I have been creating packages that they can use at home, encouraging them to get outside. We know from the last lockdown that the outdoors was a crucial element to everyone’s mental health, children as well as adults. I know for many, myself included January has felt very challenging, it’s grey, it’s wet and it’s cold and we are in another lockdown and January has not felt an easy month to get outside. However, when we do get out it is so worth it. Some of the moments of joy this term has been using ice in our play, experimenting with freezing objects, adding colours, using coloured salt on the ice. Making bird feeders and bird spotting, the excitement, and delight from the children of seeing a bird, then finding it on the RSPB bird spotting sheet, children calling out to a blackbird that there is food for them, and calling a pigeon to come and eat. I and some of my team have also discovered how to get bubbles to freeze!. I think that brought us more delight than the children ( strong bubble mixture is the answer- recipe at the end ).

January has been hard, but being outside, being in nature has rescued me. I know it also has helped the children I work with, it has brought them joy and excitement, and discovery. One good thing which will come from this mental health week is a reminder of how important it is that we pay attention to what helps children’s mental health. At the top of my list is the outdoors, if we can help children and families to connect with the outdoors and nature, if we can enable them to engage in the awe and wonder around them, then we are offering them such an important underpinning tool for their wellbeing and mental health.

Strong bubble mixture recipe

1 cup of strong washing up liquid ( eco ones don’t work, I use Fairy)

6 cups of water

1 tablespoon glycerin

Give it a gentle stir and then play. This makes giant bubbles, but can also be used for small bubbles and freezing bubbles- To get them to freeze, let them land, and then after a few minutes, they start to freeze ( needs to below 0 for this to work).

For more information on children’s wellbeing, I have written

Promoting Young Children’s Emotional Health and Wellbeing

Promoting Emotional Wellbeing in Early Years Staff

Coping in January

I find January quite hard, it often feels like a long and grey month. Currently, I am feeling a greater sense of heaviness for the next few weeks. It is not helped by the uncertainty about schools returning, I currently have 3 plans in place for my work this term and I have no idea which one I will be going with tomorrow, of course, this is the same for teachers and parents across most of the country. Uncertainty and last-minute changes can lead many people to feel on edge, being more snappy, finding it difficult to be motivated.

With all of these thoughts I have been thinking about what will help me in January, it needs to be small actions, I have learned over the years that January is a time when I need to be more gentle with myself and now even more so. I have written myself a list to remind me of things I can do that will help me feel ok. They are small reminders of actions that help to make me smile, help me to relax, and help to nurture myself. We will all have different things that help us, writing a list may sound daft, but I know that sometimes when it becomes grey and dreary I can start to catastrophise and forget what helps me, a list helps to remind me. I probably won’t do everything on the list, but it reminds me of things I enjoy, things that bring me moments of joy

This is my list:

Have flowers in the house each week

Daily walks ( find new places to walk)

Wild swim when I can

Sunrise walks if I can’t swim in the pool

Meet friends for take away coffee and walk

Read

Plan the garden for the spring

Look for the Tawny Owls

Watch a new film each week

Watch a new box set

Listen to podcasts

Bake a cake

Make soap

Make marmalade

Exhaustion in education settings

It is finally the end of term 2. I thought term 5 & 6 last academic year was the hardest I have seen, but no this term I think has been the most challenging. I am tired, but I know this is nothing compared to the utter exhaustion the teachers, ta’s and senior leaders in schools are feeling. It has been such a strange term and it has impacted me in ways I did not expect. As well as being a nurture consultant with young children, I am also a writer and a trainer, but this term I have not felt able to write. That might be partly because at the end of the last term I finished one of my biggest writing projects, a new book for Routledge, but I think it was also due to trying to manage the constant change, I did not have the capacity to think about writing or training.

This week I have been writing reports for the children I support, it has given me some headspace to think and reflect. As I write that, I know that is a total luxury, and if I am honest I am feeling a bit guilty about that. One of my reflections has been how this term has felt like I have been standing on shifting sands. Every time I planned something, things changed, the rules changed, the children were there, then they were not there, it reached the point where daily I dreaded seeing an email or having a phone call telling me about another change. I have realised during this strange year that I really don’t like change! I like routine, I like to know what my plans are and I like to have notice about any changes. That is very similar to the children I support, they don’t like change and they like to be prepared for changes. If nothing else I think this term has given me a deeper understanding and appreciation of how the children I work with often feel.

As I said at the beginning of this piece of writing, I am tired, but I know this is nothing compared to what I am seeing in education staff. In previous blogs, I have written that I was concerned for education staff, but ending this year, I have never seen so much exhaustion and brokenness on such a large scale. I can’t express how worried I am for the staff who work in our education settings. They are doing the most incredible job. During terms 5 and 6, it is thanks to many education settings that families had food to eat, there were so many food deliveries to families organised by them as well as all the education they organised. In terms 1 and 2 this academic year, many staff have been worried about their health, and yet they have been working incredibly hard to provide an education for the children. Despite all of this the government and the tabloid press seem to think it is ok to criticise, to accuse teachers of slacking. I have often felt that the government and the press have no idea about what it is like to work in a school, and these last few months have proved that.

My hope is that the education staff can stop and rest over these next few weeks, but I know that won’t actually happen. Education settings are still responsible for the track and trace until Christmas eve, they will still be planning and preparing for next year and our colleagues in the senior schools will now be changing their plans for the beginning of the new term, as well as figuring out how to roll out testing on a massive scale.

Now is a time when those education staffs need to be held up, supported, encouraged, and helped.

The long term

In Bath, we are entering week 8 of this first term back. If I am honest I didn’t think we would get to this week, I genuinely thought the schools would have been locked down or there would have been a 2 week half term as a circuit breaker, I know I’m not the only person in education who was hoping for the 2 week half term!.

My role is in reception classes, and all the reception classes I am in feel pretty normal, and this is down to some very dedicated staff making it feel ok for children. I know senior leaders, teachers, and teaching assistants are working so hard to make this ok. The transition into school is always hard, and we are seeing children who are finding the transition trickier after having 6 months at home. But at this point in the school year, I am not so worried by the children, but I am concerned about how much the staff are carrying and how tired many of them are.

As an outside person going into schools, I can see the job in a school is harder. There is more planning, more cleaning, lots of logistical thinking around keeping the children in their bubbles, barely any time to take a lunch break as the staff are often monitoring the lunchtime for their class, virtual school meeting’s, virtual parents evening alongside the hope that they and the children in their class won’t get Covid. This is a lot of additional thinking and worry.

If I am honest I am quite concerned about term 2, the term which is always nuts!, planning for Christmas often starts straight into the new term. To survive the term 2 education staff need to be well organised. Alongside the additional things they try to fit in with all the teaching they need to do and targets they need to reach; they also have the children’s rising excitement and for others the distress because it is all changing and they don’t like change. This alongside minimal lunch breaks, extra cleaning, extra planning re Covid, trying to keep everyone safe, that is a huge burden.

What is the answer? I don’t have one, but I do know that anyone who is living with or is friends with a teacher or teaching assistant, be kind to them this half term, be extra kind. They may need lots of rest and relaxation, but I know many will be using the half term to prepare for term 2, but they also need a break from work and schools and thinking and planning.

how to thrive through the autumn months

Schools have been back in England for 4 weeks, there are another 4 weeks until half term. Personally, I have loved being back in schools, working directly with children and staff, I have been reminded how much I love my job as a nurture consultant. If you were to quickly look into a reception classroom it would feel and look pretty normal to any other year, apart from hand sanitiser and lots of handwashing symbols on the visual timetables. However, behind that is a staff team who are working extremely hard to make this a success. As the weeks have gone by I have noticed how much the staff are holding, the extra worry, the extra organising, and planning. This is heavy and understandable that staff are feeling tired, and yet there are still 4 weeks to go.

This week I have begun to wonder with staff what will help them to nurture themselves. As a nurture consultant, my job isn’t just about nurturing the children, it’s as much about helping staff to feel nurtured too. But I am aware that I cant just talk about it and advise, I need to live that too.

At the end of this week, a question I have been thinking about for myself is how can I thrive through these Autumn months, I love autumn, the colours the change in temperature, having a fire in our stove, all of those things bring me joy. However, I am aware that this autumn feels heavy, in our family life there is a lot of heaviness and then add COVID, the hurt we hear about through black lives matter, climate crisis, Brexit, this all feels huge and can be overwhelming. My gut feeling is I need to put in place things that will help me to thrive, I need to plan for this. I started this weekend, yesterday I went on a mini day trip to the coast with my husband, we swam in the sea, I floated on my back in the sunshine. The rays of the sun warming me while the water held me, that felt so nourishing and I was able to switch off, just enjoy the sun and the moment. I have a list of ideas that will help me to thrive, these are a mix of sunrise walks, being in the woods, collecting sweet chestnuts, places to swim, chutneys and jams to make, and books to read. These are all simple things, but I know I need to be intentionally proactive in embedding them.

Hope for the new term

With the start of the new term, I am feeling fizzy inside!, it’s not a dread, thankfully I love my job, however, it’s the fizz of expectation with the slight nervousness and unknown of what lies ahead. I am aware that over the last week this feeling has been growing. I usually experience this a little on the return to school. But this year it is a stronger feeling than normal, as we are not in normal times. I haven’t met the new children I will support, I am not totally sure what the new school set up’s will be like, and I am slightly anxious about how children who have been out of a setting for 6 months will feel about starting school.

I am hugely aware that I feel unsure, and this includes slight nagging doubts and questions about will I remember what to do, what happens if a child becomes dis-regulated on my first day in a school, will I remember how to respond. The logical part of my brain kicks in and tells myself this is my work world, I know how to respond, as my 21 yr old daughter this morning reminded me I will automatically say ‘ Wow I can see you are so cross and angry, your face is red and I can see you want to hit, but we don’t hit people’ and then apparently I will play with mud or playdough! ( according to her this sums up my job well!). And I expect she is right.

But if I am feeling fizzy and slightly nervous, then I am pretty certain teachers, headteachers, parents, nursery workers, children and young people across the country are also feeling that slight anxiety, worry, fizziness. We are in different times, this is not just a normal new return, which can be hard for many in ordinary times. This is different, as well as the usual concerns there are of course many anxieties around COVID, safety, and protection, for some they have been away from school or nursery for 6 months, that all complicates our feelings and anxieties.

Knowing that I am feeling like this, I am trying to pay attention to my breathing, spend more time outside noticing and enjoying nature, barefoot walking, and wild swimming, all ways to be extra nurturing to myself.

My hope for the new term is that wellbeing will be high on the agenda, that headteachers and managers will be supporting their own wellbeing and from there they are then able to support their staff wellbeing who are then able to support the children’s wellbeing. Wellbeing needs to underpin this return, it can’t be an add on, it needs to be an embedded approach. But also parents and partners of staff who work in education need to focus on their loved ones’ wellbeing in these next days and weeks. Provide food, hugs (where allowed), chocolate!, a listening ear. This needs to be a joint effort, a joint support package.

Focus on children’s wellbeing

The last two weeks I have had the joy of working on a playscheme, the team I worked with included artists, sports coaches, forest school leader, playworkers, and nurture workers. We represented 6 organisations and we worked with 2 bubbles of children, with 42 children altogether, from 28 families and 9 schools, funded by St Johns foundation. The children were aged 4-11. Our ethos was based on high-quality early years practice, following children’s interests underpinned by a nurture approach. The whole play scheme was delivered outside on a school site, in their forest school area.

Before it began I was slightly nervous about how it would be, sometimes playschemes can be manic, especially if there is a team of adults who think the way forward to is to hype children. This play scheme was intentionally well planned with calm adults and a nurturing basis. The team leader and I have a long background in the early years and we wanted a playscheme that would nurture children and offer them open-ended opportunities in the way many early years settings offer. The aim was also to offer sports, art, play in an outdoor provision to support the children’s mental health and wellbeing. We knew that this could work across the ages of 4-11 and it did.

For many of these children lockdown has been a tricky experience, quite a few of the children had not been socialising with people outside their family, some of the children lived in flats with a limited outdoor provision, for many of the children lockdown had been a stressful experience and has negatively impacted their social, emotional and mental health. The children were identified and nominated by their schools. My role was to support the emotional wellbeing of the staff and children, we intentionally had a high ratio of adult to child, enabling us to offer the safety and emotional regulation that the children needed.

Part of the reason the playscheme worked so well, better than any of us imagined or hoped for, was the multidisciplinary team. Children were able to choose the things they wanted to do and the staff was able to facilitate and support this, one little boy discovered he is really good at hockey, he told us he hates sports but he tried hockey and loved it, another child discovered she loves making things with clay, other children experienced a campfire for the first time, the children together with the play workers made a wooden treehouse and took pride in what they had made. One boy on the last day wanted to chop down a tree, this was made possible with the support of staff, as there was a tree on the site that needed removing. Throughout the playscheme the children found space to be with others, to chat about how they were feeling, to express themselves through art and sport and play.

For years I have been been a huge advocate of following children’s interests and enabling children to discover new things and opportunities by offering open-ended provocations. This play scheme reminded me again of how powerful it can be when children have adults around them who can follow the child’s interests, who can come alongside them with interest and curiosity and co adventure with them. We hoped at the beginning that the playscheme would offer respite to the children from the ongoing challenges of COVID, we hoped that it would give them the freedom to play and socialise. It certainly did this, but for many of the children, it also gave them new opportunities, helped them to see themselves in new ways and discover new things about what they can do and enjoy. As we all reflected at the end, this playscheme also hugely benefitted the staff, there was a lot of laughter and delight at being with the children, it gave us a renewed sense of purpose and reconnected us to work we all love and are passionate about.

My final reflection on the time was how crucial these 2 weeks were for the children’s wellbeing, on the return to school my concern is that many schools will go back to how it was before lockdown. During lockdown many children have not had the chance to be with friends, socialise, play, be active and be creative. This needs to be addressed, I would love to see every school putting on a playscheme for all their children on the return, how radical and positive that would be. I know I am dreaming big here, and I know many will tell me it is out of the question. But, there does need to be an emphasis on children’s wellbeing when they return, and using the arts, play, sport and emotional support is an excellent way to assist that.

The organisations involved were:

Brighter Futures

Bath area ply project

Forest of imagination

Twerton infant school

Get sported

St Johns foundation

End of term

I have had the chance to stop for two weeks, my term ended a couple of weeks ago. The last few weeks of the term felt manic, with a mix of very different endings both in my family and with work and preparing new starts for next term. There were times in term 6 that I strongly felt the sense of reduction and depletion that COVID has brought too many. For most of the lockdown, I and our team found creative ways through, to continue to support children and staff, if I’m honest other than missing my daily swims, COVID lockdown was not that hard for me. But as the term ended I became quite overwhelmed by the difference, I wasn’t able to do endings I would normally do, with the schools, with the children or with our team. I think the final zoom meetings with children and the team meeting felt particularly sad and wrong. I know that endings are important and it felt so frustrating to not be able to do them in the way I normally would.

It’s also made me reflect on how much I take for granted simple parts of my job such as seeing children. In term 6 I would normally visit the new children I will be supporting in September, I would visit them in the nursery at least once, sometimes twice. I would meet them, observe them, introduce myself, and maybe discover one thing about them. This year that has not been possible, instead I have read notes, so many notes, I have spoken to nursery workers, health visitors, children center staff, social workers, parents. But, I have realised none of those conversations make up for seeing the child. I have always been an advocate of observations. The first early year’s qualification I took when I was 16-18 was the NNEB. In this course, we were taught how to do observations. This was an essential element of the training. I was taught that you never make a view about a child until you have watched, observed, noticed. Thirty years on and I particularly realised this year how much that early teaching has influenced my practice and how underprepared I feel for the new term without the observations.

The last couple of weeks have also made me realise I haven’t been with a child, in person, for 19 weeks. I have been working with children since I was sixteen, 19 weeks is the longest time I have had a break from directly being with children. But this is about to change, the organisation I work with are co-running a playscheme for 2 weeks with 3 other local charities, offering some play, fun, art, sport, food and emotional regulation and support ( my role in the scheme!) aimed at some of the more vulnerable children in our area. I’m looking forward to it, 2 weeks with children. It will be an interesting challenge with the new regulations we need to put in place, but I think it will be wonderful to be back working directly with children once again.

Other news from my last week is my latest book , Supporting young children through change and everyday transitions published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers is now available to buy and it has been nominated by Teach early years under their CPD, category which was a wonderful surprise.