Rising needs in the early years: Research into supporting children in the early years

The early years and months of life are a key time for many children, shaping their experiences in childhood and the foundations of their adult lives. This time can be all the more important for children who may need some form of additional support in their earliest years. There are, however, strong signs that outcomes for children in the early years who need additional support are worsening, not improving.

The below set out the LGA’s initial recommendations to central government, in response to the ‘Rising needs in the early years’ independent report. 

• The report makes clear the importance of the early years in improving the outcomes for children with Special Needs and Disabilities, and the opportunity to develop an inclusive early education system. This reiterates the importance of prevention. Early support for babies, children, parents and carers needs to be forefront, including antenatal support. Working with the voluntary and community sector, and better cross working across sectors can ensure children and families get support from the right services at the right time.
• It is vital that services work alongside parents and carers to ensure that they have the knowledge and skills to effectively support their child’s development, and to understand what child development looks like.
• Work with parents and carers, and children needs to be focused on co-design and co-production, as well as continuous evaluation to ensure services work for parents, reflect their needs and parents feel worked with, rather than done to.
• The whole system needs to wraparound and provide support to children with additional needs and their families, as well as play a key role in preventing the escalation of needs. Family Hubs and children’s centres provide a good opportunity for this, working with multidisciplinary services and improved communication across health visitors, family support workers and early years practitioners.
• The current early years education and childcare system focuses on the children of working parents. Not all vulnerable, disadvantaged or children with SEND have access to funded entitlements. Working with other services such as health and the community and voluntary sector, and family hubs, will ensure children that aren’t accessing early education provision are seen and heard by services enabling earlier intervention. There needs to be consideration of how best to support these children that are not accessing funded entitlements and therefore may not be seen by education provision until reception year.
• Young children living in areas with higher levels of deprivation and child poverty often have poorer outcomes. They are more likely to experience physical health challenges and are also less likely to reach a ‘good level of development’ in school reception class. This is compounded by the challenge in the availability of early years provision, and for parents to access it. Focusing on supporting the workforce to deliver high quality early education, reviewing the funded entitlements and ensuring providers are supported to set up in areas of deprivation could help mitigate the impacts of child poverty.
• Early years funding reform is required to ensure a more proactive approach to enabling providers to support children with SEND. This cannot be done within the existing funding pot, therefore the additional funding that has been announced in the Best Start in Life strategy is welcomed.
• Funding reform should consider de-linking Disability Access Fund from Disability Living Allowance. Other reform could consider stopping the individualised approach to funding per child (although recognising this may at times be required for specific children), and enable local flexibility to support approaches such as upfront lump sums, or working with specific clusters of settings. This enables providers to have greater clarity on the expected funding amounts and have long term clarity over expected funding, enabling consistency in provision for children with SEND.
• To enable clarity on what support all early years providers should provide to children SEND, the development of national expectations on ordinarily available provision should be revisited. This should be alongside local flexibility yet will help parents, carers, providers be aware of what should be provided to them, and ensure local authorities can work with providers to grow inclusive provision.
• Resources should be allocated to supporting effective transitions from early years providers to reception year. This includes a greater role for local authorities in ensuring funding across transition and supporting providers and schools to develop relationships.  National Government should make clearer their expectations on the different organisations to engage with each other
• Early years educators need to be seen as equal to their school aged counterparts and be recognised for the professional role they play in terms of their skill, experience, and contribution they make to the foundational work of a child’s education.
• A training and development plan for early years workforce that is clear on child development and support for families of children with SEND should be included in the workforce strategy for the early years. This should go beyond early education educators and include health, community and support services. Understanding around speech and language in the early years should be a core aspect of this training and development.
• Greater tools and resources are needed for councils to support providers to ensure all children with SEND can take up their entitlements. This includes broadening sufficiency guidance to focus on access, ensuring local authorities have the capacity to do this through at least retaining the current level of the early years funding block.
• Support for councils is needed to develop early years strategies, that go beyond the early years sufficiency focus, and ensure a systemic response that aligns with the Best Start in Life local plans being developed by councils.
• Work needs to be undertaken to understand the role and impact of specialist provision in the early years market.
• Support and investment is needed in local good practice sharing and facilitating ‘test, learn and grow’ approaches in the early years education and childcare market. This needs to consider the unique experiences of different local areas, such as rural communities.