Redcar and Cleveland has developed a project called Play-at-Home. It involves a series of home visits to children and families, with the aim of increasing parent confidence and involvement in their children's play and learning. The families invited to take part are identified as those who are not engaging in other opportunities offered by centres or other local services.

The families receive weekly visits for anything between six and sixteen weeks. The approach is flexible and adapted to individual needs. Each session lasts for around one hour and usually begins with a rhyme or song, followed by a play activity and then a book or story.

Some parents feel more relaxed at home and take part in playing with their child without feeling self-conscious about playing in front of other parents and professionals. The visits help to build confidence by looking at parents' strengths – the things they do already – as well as the things they would like to change and learn more about. As the weeks go on, the balance gradually shifts and parents begin to take the lead in playing with their child with support. Parents are also gradually introduced to and encouraged to attend group-based sessions within children's centres and the local community.

M is 20 and is expecting her second child. She lives with her partner, who is the father of her expected baby but not of her first child. Her health visitor referred her to ELPP because of concerns about her two year old daughter, W.

 

W's language development was clearly delayed with only five clearly recognisable words. W's attention span was also very limited and M's way of managing her behaviour and interacting with her daughter entailed a great deal of negative instruction.

M and the ELPP worker agreed to weekly home visits to support W to extend her vocabulary and explore ways of managing behaviour through positive reinforcement and establishing regular routines for meal and bed times. The worker was very aware of all the pressures M was dealing with and focused on making the visits fun and relaxing for her, as well as her daughter. PEEP Learning Together Folders were used and each session would generally involve:

• a safe play activity for W that allowed talking time with her mum
• an activity that was done together using every day items from around the home
• singing and looking at books together
• ideas for things that M and her partner could do with W before the next session, leaving any materials that were needed to enable this.

The first book left by the ELPP worker was destroyed before the next week's home visit. M was upset by this and explained that she didn't let W have books because she just destroyed them all. The worker decided to continue loaning books and suggested to M that to begin with she should keep the book for quiet time together and only gradually over time let W look at the book on her own.

It was felt that the family needed long-term involvement and the weekly home visits lasted several months due to several major issues within the family – including the birth of a new baby. In addition to the home visits, M was encouraged to take W to a toddler group where she could interact with other children. The relationship that M built with the ELPP worker also gave her the confidence to start a PEEP group at a local centre run by the same ELPP worker.

The double intervention of home visits and participation in a PEEP group over an extended period of time clearly worked for this family. W eventually settled well in to the routine of the group, joining in all activities and M attended regularly, sometimes with her partner.

M's knowledge and understanding of her daughter developed, as did her confidence. She came to recognise real value in W's play as an important way in which she would learn a whole range of abilities and actively offered more opportunities for play.

W developed an interest in books. By the end of the worker's involvement, W had a small 'library' at home of appropriate books bought by family members. During one of the later PEEP group sessions, W sat and held a book during 'book time' and turned each page making comments on the illustrations.

Source: Early Years Partnerships Project 2006 – 2008