 |
|
|
|
| home> newsletter archive 2008 > under5s newsletter no.01 |
| under5s - under5s newsletter no.01 |
 |
|
email address in the box and click subscribe |
| Under5s Newsletter No.01 |
| Thank you for taking the time to subscribe
to our newsletter, we hope that you find it informative and useful, please
feel free to forward it to friends and colleagues who may also find it
useful.
If you have received this in error or no
longer wish to subscribe, you can remove yourself from our mailing list
by clicking on the link at the bottom of this mail.
This week 1. Did you know
HAPPY NEW YEAR ! Welcome to the very first newsletter of
2008. We hope you had a great Christmas and New Year and look forward to
keeping you informed of developments in the early years sector throughout
2008.
1. DID YOU KNOW
NEW SEMINAR TO HELP LOCAL AUTHORITIES DEVELOP CHILDCARE COMMISSIONING TECHNIQUES New seminar to support effective commissioning
process
National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA)
has revealed it is delivering a new seminar to help local authorities develop
further ideas and techniques for engaging with the private, voluntary and
independent (PVI) sectors when commissioning childcare.
Designed for anyone involved in the commissioning
of childcare including head teachers and local authorities developing extended
services, local commissioners, procurement officers and children's centre
managers, the seminar is taking place on 31 January 2008. The one-day seminar
will help delegates develop new practices and arrangements which support
an effective partnership working process. Topics include how to develop
the tender process to encourage PVI provision to apply, sustainable arrangements,
and how to build effective selection criteria.
The day has been tailored to support the
development of practical ideas and techniques that local authorities can
use, and speakers will also look at how to turn a commissioning policy
into an actual process. A key element of the seminar focuses on how a local
authority can develop genuine partnerships with the PVI sectors, including
effective market management tools and good communication. A nursery will
share its own experience of the commissioning process, whilst two local
authorities will explore how innovative techniques are working to support
local partnerships in their area. Delegates will also have the opportunity
to explore how new ideas can be put into action, and opt for one of four
short workshops which look at how to develop a successful commissioning
strategy, costing and pricing tools, meeting supply and demand locally,
and how to stimulate the market and encourage flexibility.
Patricia Jackson, Head of National and
Regional Development at NDNA comments: "Local authorities need to work
in partnership with PVI providers to meet their duties under the Childcare
Act, and the commissioning process is a key part of making this happen.
This seminar will help those involved in commissioning develop ideas and
techniques to improve the process locally, and understand how to remove
some of the barriers that may exist for the PVI sectors. The seminar is
very much about sharing and developing innovation, but at the same time
looking at how new ideas and tools can be put into action. NDNA is working
to support both local authorities and providers to achieve genuine partnerships,
and this effective seminar explores how the vision for commissioning can
be made a reality for both local authorities and providers."
ETHNIC VIOLENCE IN KENYA PUTS MANY CHILDREN AT RISK Save the Children is moving quickly to assist thousands of Kenyan children and their families who have been forced from their homes due to ethnic violence that erupted following the country's contested presidential elections on December 27. "With more than 300 dead and at least 250,000 people forced from their homes, the situation in Kenya remains volatile for many children," said Save the Children president and CEO Charles MacCormack. "In the last nine days, many homes and schools have been destroyed, and the lives of tens of thousands of children have been disrupted. These children remain at risk." MacCormack said he welcomed efforts by the United Nations and the U.S. government to find a peaceful solution to the current conflict, but noted, "The continued treat of violence is severely hampering aid workers in assisting displaced families with food, water, shelter and medical supplies." "Security is a major concern of humanitarian organizations right now. We need to make sure our workers can move safely within the region to assist families," MacCormack said. You can help Save the Children respond to emergencies that put at great risk the survival, protection, and well-being of significant numbers of children. By contributing to the Children's Emergency Fund, you enable us to respond immediately to children and families who urgently need our help when disasters strike. https://secure.ga4.org/01/childrens_emergency_fund
2. WEBSITE OF THE WEEK Bernard van Leer Foundation The Bernard van Leer Foundation funds and shares knowledge about work in early childhood development. The foundation was established in 1949 and is based in the Netherlands. Their income is derived from the bequest of Bernard van Leer, a Dutch industrialist and philanthropist, who lived from 1883 to 1958. The Foundation publishes a number of http://www.bernardvanleer.org/publications
3. UNDER5S DOWNLOAD CENTRE DON'T FORGET - you can find 24 different plans in the Download Centre and all of our planning is available to download today. Don't miss the fantastic Let's Sign signing resources. Childminders - if you are struggling with Birth to Three, take a look at the Birth to Three Planning Guidance. http://cnb-host4.clickandbuild.com/cnb/shop/under5s?op=merchant-welcome-null EARLY LEARNING FORUMS Join Us ! To discuss early years issues. To find support and advice on early years education. To relax and chat amongst friends. Come on in and have a look... http://www.earlylearningforums.co.uk/
4. DATE FOR YOUR DIARY This is the busiest time of the year for festivals and events, so here is a quick list of what's happening when. February 5th - Pancake Day February 7th - Chinese New Year
February 14th - Valentine's Day
March 1st - St David's Day March 2nd - Mother's Day
March 17th - St Patrick's Day
March 21st - Holi
March 21st - Purim
March 23rd - Easter
March 25th - Birth of the Prophet Mohammed
|
| 5. NEWS
GOVERNMENT MUST RESCUE 'FORGOTTEN MILLION
CHILDREN' IN POVERTY
More than a million children in Britain are living in poverty despite the fact that at least one of their parents is in work, according to new research from the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr), published today (Thursday 03.07.08). The research shows that, although 600,000 children have been lifted out of poverty in the last ten years, the total number of poor children in working households has stayed the same at 1.4 million. Half of all poor children now live in a working household. The report argues that lifting these 'forgotten million' children out of poverty requires action to tackle high numbers of poor children in working couple families and improve wages at the very bottom of the labour market. Specifically ippr recommends a package of measures to improve work incentives for low income couples and increase financial support through tax credits, along with action to boost the effectiveness of the minimum wage: Introduce a Personal Tax Credit Allowance (PTCA) - to boost the financial incentive for second adults in couple families to move into work. The risk of poverty declines significantly where couples have two or one-and-a-half earners, but Working Tax Credits fails to incentivise potential second earners to move into work. Individualising the Working Tax Credit threshold would allow each adult in eligible families to earn up to £100 a week before their entitlement to tax credits started to be withdrawn. Under the PTCA, a family earning minimum wage would be £36 a week (or £1,872 a year) better off from a second adult moving into part-time work than under the current system. Increase the value of Working Tax Credit for couple families - by one third to £91.31 a week (or £4,748 a year) from April 2008, reflecting the fact that couple families need more income to lift them out of poverty than lone parent households. This would benefit 1.6 million families, lifting 200,000 children out of poverty at a cost of £1.6 billion. This could be paid for by removing entitlement to Child Tax Credit from around two million higher income families. Boost the effectiveness of the minimum
wage - through maintaining the value of the minimum wage at least in line
with average earnings growth over an economic cycle, ensuring tougher enforcement
of the minimum wage, and extending the adult rate to 21-year-olds while
retaining lower rates for younger workers.
"Significant progress has been made in the last 10 years in lifting nearly 600,000 children out of poverty. However, half of all poor children now live in households where someone is at work and the challenge is to ensure that work really is a route out of poverty. Tax credits and the minimum wage have 'made work pay' relative to being on benefits but these don't yet go far enough to ensure more children are lifted out of poverty. More action is needed to combine financial support and measures to boost parental employment with action to deliver fairness on pay and opportunities for progression at work." ippr also recommends: Building 'fair wage' commitments into public
sector employment contracts and the £125 billion spent each year
by the Government on public procurement
Working out of Poverty: A study of the low paid and the working poor by Graeme Cooke and Kayte Lawton is available to download. More than five million people - over a fifth (23 per cent) of all employees in this country - were paid less than £6.67 an hour in April 2006. This is based on a low pay rate of 60 per cent of full-time median earnings, equivalent to a little over £12,000 a year for a 35-hour working week. In April 2006, a 35 hour week would have earned someone £9,191 a year (before tax or National Insurance). There are now 1.4 million poor children living in working households, the same number as in 1997. Since that year the number of poor children in workless households has fallen from two million to 1.4 million. Half of all poor children now live in a household in which someone is working, up from around four in ten a decade ago. Over the last decade the proportion of households in which someone is at work but that remain poor has gone up - now amounting to over one in seven working households. Almost six in ten poor households (57 per cent) are working households, up from under a half (47 per cent) ten years ago. Overall, families with children face twice the risk of working poverty as those without. However, rates of working poverty vary considerably between different family types with different working patterns. Almost eight in ten working-poor families with children are headed by couples, though such families are twice as likely to have someone in work as lone-parent families. Nearly six in ten working-poor families with children contain single-earner couples. Overall, the risk of poverty is twice as high for children in a lone-parent as for a couple family. However, while worklessness is a more significant factor underpinning poverty in lone-parent families, working poverty is the key factor for couple families. The risk of working poverty is very low among couples with either two full-time earners or one full- and one part-time, but rises substantially where there is just one earner (to over 50 per cent if the single earner is only working part-time). The risk of working poverty is twice as high for lone-parent families working part-time than for those working full-time. Full-time working lone parents face three times the risk of poverty as dual-earner couple households. More than four in ten working-poor family units are those without children, over seven in ten of whom are single people. Working households headed by younger people, those from ethnic minorities and those that include a disabled adult face higher risks of poverty. While the minimum wage has substantially boosted pay for the lowest earners, a single-earner couple with two children would have to work almost 80 hours a week at the minimum wage to avoid poverty through their wages alone (without any other benefits or tax credits). http://www.ippr.org/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=581 6. INTERNATIONAL NEWS NEW ZEALAND USING ICT IN EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION: SURVEY In April 2005 Foundations for Discovery:
ICT Framework for Early Childhood Education was released to the sector.
Foundations for Discovery included initiatives that aimed to provide early childhood services with access to some resources that schools were already using. In the early stages of development this appeared to be a logical direction. Experience has shown that adults and children in ECE services are using ICT in different ways to the school sector, and make different demands on certain kinds of equipment. To ensure the intiatives provided for in Foundations for Discovery are still relevant and given the rapid rate of change in ICT it seems wise to update the original information. PriceWaterhouseCoopers has been contracted to provide an environmental scan of ICT opportunities for the early childhood sector. This scan will consider how the sector currently uses ICT, the future use of ICT and environmental influences. The final report will help inform future decisions. To gain your feedback an online survey has been developed. The survey should only take 15 minutes to complete and will help ensure that the final report is reliable. The Ministry thanks you for your time at this busy time of year. We are confident that the survey results will help all of us make sustainable ICT investment decisions that will support quality teaching and learning for children into the future. Note: In the survey centre-based service
types have been defined individually to ensure that any different issues
are clearly identified.
USA ON THE HEELS OF NEW FEDERAL REQUIREMENTS, STATES RECEIVE PRACTICAL ADVICE Prominent foundations join forces to fund ground-breaking report The recent Head Start reauthorization offers states a new opportunity to refine and coordinate early childhood programs. For those grappling with the most effective ways to do this, a report released today by ZERO TO THREE and Pre-K Now provides specific suggestions and strategies to improve the often complex systems serving babies, toddlers and pre-kindergarteners. "Common Vision, Different Paths" comes just in time to help states respond to new federal requirements to establish State Advisory Councils on Early Education and Care charged with improving the quality, availability and coordination of services for young children. It recommends a broad array of high-quality, accessible and affordable programs and services for young children and their families, including: developmental screenings, well-child visits, parenting education, and quality child care, pre-k, and Head Start programs. The report provides real-life examples of challenges encountered by five states currently working to build high-quality, comprehensive early childhood systems and the strategies they used to overcome them. Lessons learned from California, Illinois, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania will help other states successfully address funding constraints, political clashes, conflicting regulations and differing agendas in order to create the supportive conditions all children need to develop to their full potential. A diverse group of powerful and prominent funders joined forces to support the publication in order to put early childhood issues on the forefront of state and national policy agendas. Those grantmakers include: the Buffett Early Childhood Fund; the Annie E. Casey Foundation; the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the David and Lucile Packard Foundation; and The Pew Charitable Trusts. "The leadership of this prestigious group of funders in making this report possible speaks volumes about the need to finally have in place a national vision for helping our youngest children receive the quality services that they need," said Matthew E. Melmed, executive director of ZERO TO THREE. ZERO TO THREE and Pre-K Now, two leading early childhood organizations, teamed up to write the report, which will be widely disseminated to state legislators, governors, state and local agencies and advocates. "We determined that by uniting our efforts, we could more effectively help states develop the kind of programs and policies that ensure infants, toddlers, and young children receive the strong start they need to thrive and succeed," said Pre-K Now Executive Director, Libby Doggett. THE FUTURE OF CALIFORNIA'S KIDS ON THE LINE IN 2008, ACCORDING TO NEW CHILDREN NOW REPORT CARD, "THE STATE OF THE STATE'S CHILDREN" Children's Health and Education at Make-or-Break Juncture, Must Be Prioritized Despite State's Budget Crunch. Public policy decisions in 2008 are critical to determining the well-being of California's children and the state for years to come. This is one of the key findings of a new study by Children Now, a leading nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to giving all children the opportunity to reach their full potential. The 2008 California Report Card: The State of the State's Children, a research report released today, highlights the generally poor health and education status of the state's children by assigning letter grades to key individual determinants, such as a C in health insurance, a C- in K-12 education and a D+ in obesity. According to the report and its supporting documentation, these issues are undermining children's optimal development and putting the state's future at undue risk by dramatically increasing the financial costs and societal problems faced by future generations. The report also shows, however, that real progress on these issues can and should be made in 2008. "The health and education of California's kids are at a pivotal point," said Ted Lempert, Children Now president. "Whether or not all children in the state have health insurance coverage will likely be decided by the voters in November 2008, and realizing the potential of 'the year of education reform' in the face of the state's budget deficit requires that lawmakers prioritize children first in their upcoming agendas and budgets." Lempert added, "Doing anything less would misrepresent the overwhelming will of California voters and the needs of the state." Children Now's report presents the most current and comprehensive set of indicators of California children's health and education status, including: Only 47% of 3- and 4-year-olds attend preschool;
California's K-12 students continue to post slight gains in achievement test scores, but still only approximately 40% are achieving grade-level proficiency in English and math. Improvements simply aren't happening fast enough. At the current rate, it will take 30 years before all children reach the state's academic achievement goals. "It's now known that big, bold changes are the only way to improve outcomes for our children and society," said Lempert. "But, if we lose the momentum currently behind making these changes, it will take many, many years to build it up again." Lempert concluded, "We are looking for a strong commitment from the Governor and the Legislature to making comprehensive, systemic reforms to children's health and education in 2008." The 2008 California Report Card: The State of the State's Children is available for free online by clicking here. http://publications.childrennow.org/publications/invest/reportcard_2008.cfm KIDS MORE ACTIVE WHEN PLAYGROUND HAS BALLS, JUMP ROPES, UNC STUDY SHOWS Children play harder and longer when their child care centers provide portable play equipment such as balls and jump ropes, more opportunities for active play, and physical activity training and education for staff and students, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health. Increased activity levels help children maintain a healthy weight, the researchers say, which is critical as obesity rates climb nationwide, especially among children. The study, called "The Childcare Environment and Children's Physical Activity," published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, examines environmental factors that encourage children to be active with greater intensity and for longer periods of time. "Childhood obesity is an epidemic that threatens the future health of our nation," said Dianne Ward, EdD, director of the School of Public Health nutrition department's intervention and policy division and a co-author of the study. "We know that about 57 percent of all 3- to 5-year-olds in the United States attend child care centers, so it's important to understand what factors will encourage them to be more active, and, hopefully, less likely to become obese." Researchers assessed the physical and social environmental factors thought to influence healthy weight at 20 child care centers across North Carolina. They evaluated the physical activity levels of children attending the centers. Additional data were gathered through interviews and documents provided by the child care directors. The study showed that children had more moderate and vigorous physical activity and fewer minutes of sedentary activity when their center had more portable play equipment, including balls, hoola hoops, jump ropes and riding toys, offered more opportunities for active play (inside and outside), and had physical activity training and education for staff and students. Stationary equipment, such as climbing structures, swings and balance beams, were associated with lower intensity physical activity, researchers said, but are beneficial to other aspects of child development, such as motor and social skills. The researchers also noted that centers with more computer and television equipment actually scored better on activity levels. "It's unlikely that TV and computers promoted active behavior," Ward said, "but it could be that centers that have the resources to buy media equipment may also spend more on equipment and activities that promote physical activity and provide supplemental training and education for staff." Although previous research pointed to a link between a children's physical activity and child care centers, there had been little data explaining which aspects of the child care environment actually promoted vigorous physical activity. Not surprisingly, researchers said, children in centers that ranked higher on supportive environment criteria in the study receive approximately 80 more minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity and 140 fewer minutes of sedentary activity per week compared to centers with less supportive environments. "Child care providers can play a huge role in encouraging children to be active and developing habits and preferences that will help them control their weight throughout their lives," Ward said. "The easiest way to increase physical activity may be as simple as providing more active play time and relatively inexpensive toys, like balls and jump ropes," she said. "Our data don't go this far, but parents buying toys and games for children this time of year might consider stocking up on jump ropes and hoola hoops. And for their own health, they should get outside with their children and run, jump and play, too." Other authors of the study are Derek P.
Hales, PhD, and Deborah F. Tate, PhD, from UNC; Julie K. Bower from the
University of Minnesota; Daniela A. Rubin, PhD, from California State University,
Fullerton; and Sara E. Benjamin, PhD, from Harvard Medical School.
7. INTERNATIONAL EVENTS 2008 POLICY SYMPOSIUM
Hyatt Regency Washington
NACCRRA's Policy Symposium features more than 70 sessions on the latest policy, research, and practice developments in child care and CCR&R. The Symposium offers a forum for policy analysis and discussion, examination of latest research, high-quality training, peer networking, and resources dissemination for 600 to 700 attendees from across the country http://www.naccrra.org/symposium/2008/ 8. MORE EDUCATIONAL SITES For more educational sites visit Sites for Teachers http://www.sitesforteachers.com/perl/rankem.pcgi?id=under5s
Kind regards
The Under5s Team
|
|
email address in the box and click subscribe |
 |
| under5s - newsletter no.01 |
| home> newsletter archive 2008 > under5s newsletter no.01 |
 |