Just as we were starting to think face to face contact with families was on the horizon, we once again found ourselves starting 2021 in another national lockdown. Fortunately, funding secured from the National Lottery Community Fund provided us and our Sheffield Early Learning Community partners with the resources to provide a flexible and responsive approach to support families.
Piloting a new programme
Working in partnership with Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust and Sheffield City Council, we delivered and tested the pilot of Explore, Play, Learn programme. 17 families with young children identified as not reaching the expected levels of development in their speech, language and communication took part in this pilot. This funding took us all on a learning journey helping us to better understand partnership working and the need for fast and fluid programme adaptions.
Supporting families
Not able to deliver the planned face to face group sessions due to Covid restrictions, our first consideration was how to continue to support families. We quickly moved to online individual sessions. There were initial concerns that this new way of working might create digital challenges for families, however, we were encouraged when attendance and retention improved, and all the families completed the entire six-week programme.
Why was online successful?
We discovered that it removed some of the practical barriers for families, giving them more opportunity to attend: “It just seems less daunting for many families to do a Zoom call than to have to travel on public transport with siblings in tow and have to arrive at a set time … it’s just not going to happen”.
As restrictions began to ease, further adaptations enabled the NHS practitioner to combine online support with meeting families in their homes. Time with families allowed them to observe interactions and parents try out some of the new skills and play activities with their child.
“Explore, Play, Learn has helped us to develop trust better with the families – we’re able to nurture a more trusting relationship… I can offer 1:1 undivided attention which helps builds up a rapport and develop their [parents’] confidence.” – NHS practitioner.
Looking ahead
Due to the positive engagement of families, this ‘hybrid’ approach will be a key consideration for future programmes.
“I don’t think we would have got anywhere near 100% attendance over the 6 weeks if we’d run Explore, Play, Learn as a group activity. We've never had had 100% attendance before.” – NHS Manager.
Working together on the pilot gave practitioners from different types of services that support families, the NHS, and Sheffield City Council Family Centres the space to strengthen their working relationships.
Built-in reflection time provided the opportunity to consider the parents' journey and to improve the process for families transitioning between services. This led to improvements in how the practitioners worked with each other to support families.
Increasing capacity
Some funding was also used to increase capacity, allowing the NHS practitioner to focus solely on delivering Explore, Play, Learn. This gave the practitioner the dedicated time to develop working relationships with other key professionals providing support to the families involved.
This wider engagement with professionals provided a deeper and more holistic understanding of the needs of the child and the family and meant that programme adaptations were more responsive to individual needs.
The ability to offer a tailored, individualised programme based on the unique development needs of that child and family circumstances is an approach that the Sheffield City Council Family Centre’s staff will be adapting as the families transition over to their service.
To find out more about Explore, Play, Learn pilot and our work in Sheffield please contact [email protected].
Thanks to the National Lottery Community Fund for making this possible.
