goodness knows if it's right
It is very important as an early year’s practitioner to understand just how important partnership working is and what the key principles are. These partnerships help children and young people to interact with others, including professionals, to achieve a common goal. In order for this to be effective the relationship needs to have:
• Trust and honesty – If the parents don’t trust you to be open and honest then they won’t believe you have their child’s best interests at heart this could mean that they refuse to take on board any suggestions. It could also mean that they won’t relay important and helpful information to you.
• Agreed shared goals – Everyone needs to be working together and in the same direction. If everyone has different objectives this can become confusing and daunting for the child and their families. It also makes it very difficult to track their progress. The most important thing is to not ‘butt heads’ as this can cause friction and make the situation feel very unsettling for the families and their child.
• Good communication – This is so important as everyone will be unable to work co-operatively and coordinated if communication is not good. The family and child could become confused and the objective could get lost along the way. It is incredibly important for good communication in order to make everyone feel valued and to work towards that shared goal.
The best partnerships are those where each partner is valued equally and whose opinion has as much weight as each of the other partners and for it to be as successful as possible everyone would contribute as much as they can and those contributions would be respected and valued by each other. There are huge benefits of working in partnership, it allows all families to share information about their children’s development and learning meaning those children with particular needs receive coordinated support. By working as a team this can help families to feel the support they need and this ultimately will help the child to feel more secure as they are in a stable environment with everyone having a good understanding of what is needed. Good partnership working leads to:
• Improved outcomes for the children;
-be healthy
-stay safe
-enjoy and achieve
-make a positive contribution
-achieve economic well-being
• Improved outcomes for their families by accessing a larger range of services.
• Benefits for the practitioner and the other agencies such as less replication and more evidence being shared.
• Making work more effective for everyone.
• Meeting the child’s individual needs and improving their development.
“There are compelling reasons related to good practice as to why professionals should engage in multi-agency work, as discussed by a variety of works such as Percy-Smith (2005), Fitzgerald and Kay (2008), Glasby and Dickinson (2008), Morris (2008a), Cheminais (2009), Davis (2011) and Smith (2013). These can be summarized as follows:
1. To co-ordinate the work of those involved. For instance, if a social worker and health visitor are both involved in supporting a parent with a young child, co-ordination may ensure that they visit the family on alternate weeks and do not, say, both arrive at the house at the same time (unless by arrangement).
2. Multi agency work can lead to sharing of resources. A social worker may plan to engage in some direct work with a child as part of an assessment, and has the time and other materials necessary, but not an appropriate venue. The child’s school may offer the use of a room within its premises to carry out this work.
3. Multi-agency work can lead to the joint funding of projects. Under the Every Child Matters programme this became much more prevalent. Especially for complex circumstances, creative and flexible responses involving a number of different agencies offering funding can sometimes provide a solution.
4. Professionals from different agencies can develop new knowledge and skills from one another as they share expertise and different approaches to meeting children’s needs.
5. Multi-agency work can lead to creative solutions to complex problems as different workers share their ideas and skills.
6. Multi-agency work should lead to better outcomes for children, as their holistic needs are addressed. If there are several agencies involved, the child’s educational, health, and social care needs (to name just three key areas) should be properly assessed and met.” (Working together for children, Gary Walker, 2018, page 9-10)
I personally have experience with working in partnership with other agencies. I was the lead professional at a number of different TAC meetings and the parents once told me that before those meetings they were very confused which professional was from which department or agency. They weren’t sure what they were meant to be doing at home and who they should be speaking to as their main contact. They also felt like they had to constantly repeat the same things to lots of different people. The TAC meeting meant that once every 6 weeks we could all come together and have those discussions meaning the parents only had to speak once. It also meant the objectives were agreed by everyone and written down so we all knew what we were trying to achieve. The parents much preferred this way of working and it also helped the child’s transition to school go a lot smoothly as well. This benefitted the family hugely as good well-being is absolutely paramount to a child’s development.
I would also note from personal experience that I do also believe that it’s important that all professionals surrounding the child and their family act with some delicacy. It’s important to remember that this is their child you are working with and discussing, not a statistic. Their child is unique and obviously very special to them and building an open relationship where you can discuss the facts without making the family feel that their child is just a ‘label’ is incredibly important. I do think that if the family feel you are as invested in their child as they are then you get more from them. More information and much better co-operation and they are also much more willing to hear you out and take your advice on board.
During your career as an Early Years practitioner you will find that you need to work in partnership with a great deal of professionals. Most often the people you will work the most closely with are your colleagues. This can be a great relationship to have in regards to the child’s care as you can bounce ideas off them and they can experience the same things that you are experiencing in your everyday setting. My colleagues and I will often find ourselves discussing the children’s care at the end of the day in an informal environment. We discuss what’s going well, what’s going wrong and then we bounce ideas off of each about what we can do in future. By having these group discussions we can all agree on a common goal. This could have been agreed at a staff meeting, this can be agreed informally or it could have been an objective that was agreed by a health care professional such as at a TAC meeting. It’s very important that everyone in the setting knows this common goal so that the child experiences a consistent approach and also then the parent’s will also have an understanding of what is being done in the setting.
By working as one team all those adults can work together to support the child’s development. Quite often a child won’t be with the same adult all the time and so it’s important for everyone to know what the targets are. It also means that the key worker has more support, so another adult may be able to think of plans, activities, ideas, solutions etc. that the key worker may not have thought of. It also means that if a member of staff is off sick a child will still receive the support they need and development won’t be interrupted.
In order for this to work there does need to be good communication between all the colleagues. It is a good idea to have regular team updates in case some staff are not working the same days and then all the information can be shared. Quite often if this is done ad hoc, someone gets missed and they don’t know what’s happening. This can lead to friction in the team which will obviously have a negative effect on the child and possibly their development. This is also a good time for colleagues to discuss any training they may need or support which ultimately will keep morale high and it will mean that the child or young person is getting the best most relevant care.
Whilst working as an early year’s practitioner you may also get to experience working with other professionals. This is a fantastic opportunity for them to share with you their specialist knowledge and for you to ask any questions that you need answers to. Professionals will quite often have more experience than you and this is a fantastic way to absorb any new information that you can take on board. You may find that it is not relevant to that child or it doesn’t work however in my experience you can quite often use that knowledge on a different child. By using their specialist knowledge you can make improvements to the child’s care and you also have a point of contact if you need some help or advice. By doing this you will achieve the best outcome for the child which is everyone’s shared goal.
I personally had an experience with a child who was diagnosed autistic. I did feel that we weren’t giving him the help that he needed and I did worry about his transition to school. In the end I enlisted the help of the local Lead SENCo who helped me get support from an educational psychologist, a child development teacher and a communication and autism worker. Having that support network around me was so helpful and actually made me relax slightly because they reassured me that everything we were doing was correct. They helped make a plan for what we needed to do and put in place. The child development teacher also helped me do a referral for a child educational healthcare plan which was in place by the time the child went to school. This helped take the pressure off and got the best outcome for the child while he was in my setting.
Other people that will be involved in the child’s care are their parents, guardians, care giver etc. These are very important people and need to be involved during every aspect of the child’s care and development plan. They know the best about their children, they know their past history and what makes them unique. If the parent’s well-being is good then more than likely this will have a positive effect on the child and their development. The parents will want the best outcome for their child and so long as they are listened to and heard they will take on board any advice and will help to make a consistent approach. They also spend a lot of time with their child in a relaxed environment so they will be able to discuss the child’s new development progress and the child’s well-being, what is working and what isn’t working.
It is important for every educational setting to recognise there needs to be good partnership working and they can find guidance for this in the statutory framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage.
“Creating the framework for partnership working
1.16 Partnership working underpins successful delivery of the EYFS in a number of different ways.
■ Where children receive education and care in more than one setting, practitioners must ensure continuity and coherence by sharing relevant information with each other and with parents. Patterns of attendance should be a key factor in practitioners’ planning.
■ Close working between early year’s practitioners and parents is vital for the identification of children’s learning needs and to ensure a quick response to any area of particular difficulty. Parents and families are central to a child’s well-being and practitioners should support this important relationship by sharing information and offering support for extending learning in the home.
■ Practitioners will frequently need to work with professionals from other agencies, such as local and community health services, or where children are looked after by the local authority, to identify and meet needs and use their knowledge and advice to provide children’s social care with the best learning opportunities and environments for all children. “(Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage, May 2008, page 10)
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