The Sutton Trust Early Years Programme

The Sutton Trust funds projects that provide support for parents and carers as their children's first educators (targeting age group 0-3). The particular challenge for the Trust is finding projects that are able to connect with the "hard to reach" parents and encourage them to engage in their child's early learning and to realise the important part that they play. Ultimately the aim is to combat the wide and growing difference in educational attainment between advantaged and disadvantaged children which can be evident as early as 22 months, a difference which can be seen clearly when children reach school age, and which has a long-term impact on educational success.

Room to Play

A free informal drop-in centre for parents and children with a difference. It is based in a former sweet shop in a busy community centre at the heart of a deprived area in the Midlands.

It is part of a three year project run by the Peers Early Education Partnership (PEEP) which aims to support parents and carers to understand and facilitate their children's learning. The initiative is being funded by the Sutton Trust in partnership with the Garfield Weston Foundation, after a successful pilot year in 2005. It aims to reach particularly - but not exclusively - parents who would be reluctant to access the more formal provision provided by social services and the health authority.

The object of the project is to develop a model for drop-in play and information points in urban shopping centres to counter social exclusion among parents who find themselves victims of unemployment, discrimination, poor skills, low incomes, substandard housing, high crime, ill-health and family breakdown.

Room to Play is being evaluated by Professor Kathy Sylva at the University of Oxford's Department of Educational Studies. A preliminary report on the shop's first three months of operation has been completed and finds that although it is too early to say whether the shop is making a difference, it is - encouragingly - being accessed by a wide cross-section of people including a 'small but significant proportion of "hard to reach" families who would have a high number of risk factors that would make them a target for a range of services'. Local health visitors are also recommending the shop to families.

The report concludes: "There is, justifiably, a real sense of achievement from the staff involved in the project that, despite a few 'teething troubles', the shop has begun very much as it was hoped... It has been a very promising beginning." The second phase of the evaluation due in 2007 will aim to determine how far the project is helping the families it was created to assist.

Summary of the Sutton Trust Shopping Centre Project: Room to Play
Evaluation of the Sutton Trust Shopping Centre Project: Room to Play
www.peep.org.uk

Talk to your Baby Campaign

Talk To Your Baby is a campaign run by the National Literacy Trust to encourage parents and carers to talk more to children from birth to three.

Talking and listening to young children helps them develop good language and communication skills, which enables them to express themselves, listen, learn, read, write and socialise better. It also helps children feel valued, builds their confidence and helps parents and children to bond.

Too many children in the UK are entering nursery and school with inadequate language and communication skills. Some of these children - an average of two in every classroom - will have specific speech or language impairments which will need professional help. Many others, however, may not have had enough opportunities to develop their communication skills as babies and toddlers. They can remain at a disadvantage compared with those who grow up in language-rich homes.

www.literacytrust.org.uk/talktoyourbaby

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