We are working in partnership with Jersey Child Care Trust and supported by the UBS Optimus Foundation UK on an ambitious three year project, (2016 – 2019), to facilitate capacity building in the early years sector and improve outcomes for young children in their families.
Currently, too many children in Jersey are not reaching their full potential and Jersey’s early years services do not currently have the opportunity for sharing best practice and improvement. This is reflected in inequalities between communities including in engagement with speech and language services as well as dedicated early years services across the island.
The Jersey Early Childhood Development Programme is also informed by stakeholders including the States of Jersey Education Department, the Health and Social Services Department, the Early Years and Childhood Partnership and the Jersey Safeguarding Partnership Board.
Our approach
NCB is tackling the inequalities in Jersey’s early years provision in three ways:
Developing an Early Years Outcomes Framework
To succeed Jersey is developing a coordinated, Jersey-wide approach to supporting young children, their families and the communities they live in. To make this happen, NCB is enabling Jersey stakeholders to develop a framework which clearly outlines priority outcomes, action plans towards these and indicators to help measure what difference the Jersey workforce is making.
Click below to download the following reports showing progress towards the framework:
- An analysis of data on children and young people’s well-being and development.
- A rapid review of evidence on proposed ‘What Works’ ideas to inform action planning for the Jersey Early Childhood Development Programme.
- Turning the Curve: Progress Report on the Outcomes Based Accountability Process – March 2017.
- Outcomes Framework for Early Childhood in Jersey’
Making it REAL (Raising Early Achievement in Literacy)
Engaging parents in their children's early literacy development has been shown to improve children's outcomes and help to narrow the gap between disadvantaged and other children.
The diversity of experiences across all children and early years settings in Jersey means that the introduction of Making it REAL will enable practitioners to reach out to parents and families, building confidence and knowledge to support early home learning, with a powerful impact on children’s outcomes and on family literacy practice. We are currently working with 611 parents and 735 children across the island in Making it REAL projects, events and wider engagement.
All nurseries and pre-schools in Jersey have been offered the opportunity to take part in an island-wide programme which includes a focus on literacy and maths and more than 500 families have taken part so far.
Knowledge Makes Change
We are improving the knowledge of ‘what works’ for families through newsletters that provide local updates, profile latest research and practice from the UK along with International contexts.
Our Knowledge Makes Change seminar series provide:
- Knowledge of ‘what works’ for young children and their families to ensure the best possible outcomes
- Information about the Early Childhood Development Programme and further opportunities to contribute
- Inspiration and ideas for early years practice to take back and share with others
- You can watch our latest seminar on Supporting Bilingual Families, presented by Nabiah Sohail on YouTube and also download the slides from the night.
The result
By the end of the programme we will have worked with over 2,000 people directly, including 835 children, over 100 practitioners and a wider audience of over 1,000 practitioners and wider stakeholders trained and consulted across the island.
We will also develop an overarching Outcomes Framework for Jersey children via a series of workshops with the stakeholders to explore outcomes data, identify data gaps, and set the vision for Jersey children for the forthcoming years, bringing stakeholders together for the first time through:
• Workshops with those providing services in the area. See our Jersey service map.
• Development of the Outcomes Framework
• Support sessions with service providers to assist them in beginning to apply OBA methods to identifying the impact of their own services.
So far, after one year:
- 615 children show improvement in early literacy
- 615 parents have increased knowledge and confidence,
- 220 children benefit from engagement with health practitioners
- 80 policy makers & practitioners directly benefit from OBA methodology and 340 benefit from access to evidence of what works,
- 160 practitioners trained in early literacy, local cadre of trainers in place for long term Making it REAL sustainability.
Take a look at our Making it REAL scorecard showing the facts and stats of the impact we have made in Year 1.