What services could be commissioned or delivered?

This section will help you think about the kind of activities that make up an effective early home learning service.

It is helpful to focus on the goal of improving outcomes for children when thinking about the activities you would like to offer. The key question then becomes: what kind of support and activities can we put in place to enable parents to provide the nurturing, play and learning experiences at home that children need for optimum development?

Messages from research (C4EO Improving children's attainment through a better quality of family-based support for early learning 2009) show that early home learning services are more effective when they:

  • involve parents as well as children
  • are developed in consultation with parents
  • work with parents within an ethos of partnership and warm, supportive respectful relationships
  • are culturally appropriate
  • are based on a mixed economy of services, including both home-based and setting-based support
  • provide more intensive support to vulnerable parents to enable them to meet their children's needs
  • avoid stigmatising vulnerable families by labelling them 'problem' families
  • target multiple risk factors
  • involve other services and specialist support where necessary
  • last long enough to make a difference.

Services to support early home learning are not easy to encapsulate as a specific intervention because of their justified and inevitable overlap with health visiting, family support services, early years services, parenting support and family learning.

However, effective services to enhance parental involvement in children's early learning are likely to involve three elements:

Diagram showing elements of enhanced parental involvement in early learning

Adapted from Reynolds 2009

Interventions to support parental involvement might focus on any or all of these processes, but they will not all be necessary for every family. ELPP (Early Learning Partnerships Project 2006 - 2008) showed the importance of practitioners being able to make informed, responsive decisions about each parent's existing strengths and support needs.

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Last updated: 20th November 2009 at 03:11:11