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Bulletin 331

18 November 2024

Welcome to our Early Years and Childcare Bulletin. Previous Bulletins are available at: Cheshire East Early years and Childcare Bulletin

Business Support

Reminder to apply/reconfirm childcare funding codes for free childcare entitlements for working families with children aged 9 months to 4 years old

Free Early Education Entitlement – Spring term data collection

The Provider Portal is now closed for spring term data. To accommodate children whose eligibility codes cannot be reconfirmed until December, the Portal will re-open on Thursday 5 December until Sunday 8 December. Please remind parents to reconfirm their eligibility code as soon as they receive the reconfirmation request via text or email from Childcare Choices.

Safeguarding and Welfare Requirements

Safeguarding and Welfare Requirements: Focus on...

Sleeping children must be frequently checked to ensure that they are safe. Being safe includes ensuring that cots and bedding are in good condition and suited to the age of the child, and that babies are placed down to sleep safely in line with the latest government safety guidance: Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) - NHS (www.nhs.uk). Practitioners may also find it helpful to read NHS advice on safety of sleeping babies: Reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) - NHS (www.nhs.uk).

National updates

EYFS Learning and Development

To contact BookTrust, please see the contact details below:

Frances Lennon, BookTrust Coordinator - 07827 954086

Sarah Harrison, BookTrust Administrator - 07827 877966

bookstart@cheshiresharedservices.gov.uk

SEND

School Transition Website

As previously mentioned, the SEND Transition team now have their transition webpage up and running. Please follow: School transitions to access various guides and resources.

The website has 4 main headings:

• Starting primary school
• Starting high school
• Post 16 education
• Transition information for professionals

Please could you signpost to the appropriate transition phase any parents/carers that would benefit from the guidance and resources around transition.

The professionals pages is for anyone who is involved in transitions and is based on the Graduated approach update which is used for each transition phase.

• Nursery to Primary
• Primary to Secondary
• Secondary to Post 16

The pages have a variety of ideas and resources to support professionals, children and families with transition. Under each phase there are transition guides which gives ideas for professionals to support children and families in the key transition phases. The webpage, guides and resources are still in the developing stages. Please provide any feedback to ensure they are useful and support where necessary. Each guide has a QR code on the back where you can send your feedback along with a link on the website to do the same. Please submit any feedback via these links or, if you would prefer, via email below to help the team support transitions as effectively as possible.

Cheshire East SEND Transition Team contact details:

Rachael Pickles – Transition Team Manager:
rachael.pickles2@cheshireeast.gov.uk 07816 144386

Loren Whiteside – Transition Adviser:
loren.whiteside2@cheshireeast.gov.uk 07557 801258

Cheshire East Chatters

Christmas Dummy Campaign

As in previous years, Cheshire East Chatters is running the ‘Give your dummy to the Christmas Elves’ campaign throughout December, and they would love you to get involved!

This is a great opportunity to raise awareness about the impact prolonged use of dummies can have on children’s speech and language development, and to encourage children and families to drop the dummy in a positive way.

Dummies can:

• Make it difficult for children to babble or practise sounds
• Stop the full range of mouth movements that are needed to make different speech sounds
• Make the muscles at the back of the mouth dominant, leading to an overuse of the ‘k’ and ‘g’ sounds
• Weaken the muscles at the front of the mouth, leading to increased dribbling
• Increase the risk of ear infections
• Cause a gap between the top and bottom teeth, which can lead to a lisp
• Affect the physical structure of the mouth – this lasts until adulthood

Research also shows that children with dummies in their mouths are communicated with less frequently. This means they hear less language and have fewer turns in interactions, which has a negative impact on language development.

You can help by:

• Displaying key message posters in your settings
• Sharing key message leaflets with your families
• Sharing Cheshire East Chatters Facebook posts to spread the message
• Setting up a ‘dummy drop’ in your nursery – lots of ideas coming up on Facebook e.g., wrap the dummy up, post it to the Elves, hang on the Christmas tree
• Replacing the dummy with a thank you letter from the Elves, and maybe a little treat!

It would be great to see your dummy campaigns in action – please send any photos to cechatters@mcht.nhs.uk or send a message via Facebook.

Resources to support the dummy campaign have been sent to all early years providers by email. Please email earlyyearsandchildcareteam@cheshireeast.gov.uk to request the resources if you haven't received them.

Family Hubs

Continuous Professional Development

Autumn Term Training available on the Early Years Training Hub

The ChESS Early Years Training Hub has lots of training opportunities for the Autumn term, please take a look and book on now!

Upcoming training next week:

Safer Recruitment - 25th November 2024 09:30 - 16:00 (Oakenclough Family Hub)

Childcare settings share with others a duty to safeguard the children in their care. Implementing safer recruitment practices is one way of discharging this safeguarding obligation. Keeping Children Safe in Education recommends that at least one of the persons involved in shortlisting and interviewing, should have safer recruitment training. This one-day course gives childcare providers, including childminders who employ assistants, information and understanding they need to recruit safely and comply with relevant statutory guidance. This course covers safer recruitment and the wider context of safeguarding, the prevalence of abuse and profile of abusers, important features of a safer recruitment process including interview and selection, setting acceptable standards of behaviour and maintaining an ongoing culture of vigilance.

Early Language Lead Network - 27th November 2024 14:00 - 16:00 (Microsoft Teams)

These sessions are delivered by Cheshire East Chatters Speech and Language Therapists and offer information and advice on how to support the early communication and language development of the children in your setting. This network will consider how children with limited understanding might feel, and how adults can support them to make sense of the world, with lots of practical tips for your nursery environment.

Enhanced Safeguarding Awareness - 27th November 2024 18:30 - 20:30 (Microsoft Teams)

This session expands on the Fundamental Safeguarding Awareness training session. The session covers the local safeguarding referral process, Risk Assessments and Health and Safety, Local Safeguarding Practice Reviews, CESCP information, Safer sleep, choking, Emotional Neglect and the Role of Family Hubs.

Effective Interactions - 28th November 2024 09:30 - 14:00 (Congleton Library)

This one day interaction training course aims to discuss and define terms relating to communication and why interaction is so important. During the session you will look at 'Top Tips for Talking' and ways you can adapt your interactions to promote communication and support the needs of the developing child, you will discuss how language levels and interaction styles differ between children and how you can differentiate to support individual children's communication development and then focus on the practicalities of how to integrate high quality adult-interaction into your daily routine.