Supporting families in the early years: what opportunities do Early Learning and Childcare settings offer?

These organisations recognise the wealth of work underway to strengthen support for families as part of the ELC expansion programme including the eligible twos provision, the deposit pilot, and the programme’s independent evaluation. [...] These organisations feel that while there are pockets of excellence there is not a universal approach to embedding support for families in the ELC offer, and wanted to scope how this could be achieved during this critical opportunity to shape services and ensure that families get the support they need. [...] The key components of a sustainable offer of support to families with children in an ELC setting should be: • Information and advice provided using a drop-in model, promoted proactively and open to all families • Where appropriate, more intensive services provided to meet the needs of the family • Based on a locality model linking in with other key services • Relationship-based • A universal offer. [...] Workforce Points made included that training for the workforce is needed to support practitioners to have a better understanding and awareness of families’ circumstances and to work with families (not only for family support staff). [...] The expansion of Early Learning and Childcare provides the perfect opportunity to do this with all the points above in line with the National Improvement Framework, GIRFEC and other policy ambitions.