Transcript

Beth Casey

I am Beth Casey, and I am a director of a company, and also I’m company SENCO, child protection officer and health and safety officer.

I’ve been at Pathways for seven years, and before I started at Pathways I’d had my children, who are now 16 and 17, and I had no formal training at all to do with childcare. There was no provision for a mother and toddler group or anything in my area so I went and I opened one up, started it, didn’t need any qualifications back then, and then I took myself off to college and did an NNEB, 9.30 until 2.30 every day and took the boys to school. So I whizzed off to college, did that, and then I’m currently doing my foundation degree, and I’m absolutely loving it. It’s made me reflect on my own practice a lot, and sort of rather than just doing what I do, it’s made me think about the reasons why I do what I do, which I think it’s made me a stronger practitioner, and it has also made me feel more comfortable to be able to, you know, train the girls.

I’m in charge of training for all the girls across all five nurseries, and it’s interesting to see the amount of people that want to actually get to the Level 3 where they’re required to go and then you’ve got some that have no desire to actually move on, but also you have the ones that really want to further their career and they’re sort of saying what can I go on next, and is there funding available, so I think training’s a huge part and I would like to go on and, you know, progress once I’ve done that. I’m not entirely sure in which field yet but, you know, definitely. I’m always learning, every day I learn something new and, you know, you accept all these challenges that are thrown against you. But I’m a bit of a bookworm as well so I’m constantly reading articles and I’m hoping that, you know, I will progress.

Catherine Warner

My name’s Catherine Warner and I work at Pathways. I started out many years ago as a childminder when I lived in Canada, and when I came in, over to England, nine years ago, I started volunteering in a playgroup, and it got me more interested in children and decided to do my NVQ 3. And since then I’ve moved on, I’m now doing my foundation degree at WarwickUniversity.

The foundation degree has been hard work. But it has helped me progress in my professional development as well as my personal development. I’ve taken the degree back to the setting. My professional role has helped me with the foundation degree as well. It’s made me more confident in my practice and my personal life.

All around it’s been good. It’s just, it’s not easy, I’m not going to say, because I’m doing it part time, but I’ve managed it.

I’d like to do my honours degree after my foundation degree, and I haven’t decided if I want to do my professional status or my teaching yet. I’m taking one year at a time and decide when I’m finished.

My husband is British; I met him over in Canada, he was living in Canada, and we got married and had our children over there, and he just wanted to come home to his parents and I came along with him. At first, it was a struggle. But I think once I threw myself into the school and the children, because I do love children, I settled in really well. But it has given me the confidence, I keep saying, if I was in Canada I don’t know if I would be doing my foundation degree. I think coming over here has even given me the confidence in myself that you get away from your family and you’re not one of them any more, you’re on your own, nobody asked me to do the foundation degree, I wanted to do it myself. I did the NVQ 3 a few years back and decided that I wanted to educate myself more.

My role at the nursery, there’s five different nurseries, and at first the owner came up to me and said she knew me from my foundation degree and knew I had the confidence to be able to go around to the different settings, and she needed somebody to cover because when you’ve got five nurseries that’s five times the amount of staff that are off ill or have personal issues, appointments, training. So I sort of float around to the different nurseries.

Donna Quail

I’m Donna, Donna Quail, and I’m a child development officer here at Madras. I’ve worked here both job share and full time. I’ve been full time for the last six months and job share previously before that.

I’ve always loved my job, since gaining my SNNEB, and working from I think about eighteen, I did take a bit of a career break to have my own children, and it was then when I was working as a registered childminder that I decided I did have a bit more free time on my hands and I wanted to get the old grey cells working again.

So I thought about doing an OU course, which is a big, big step when you’ve not done it for such a long time. So I started doing an openings course, really enjoyed the openings course, and then went in to do the E123, by which time I was back working job share at a nursery, in Madras. So I’ve been able to do a job share and do the studying, it was just, it was great and I really, really enjoyed it. I’ve really benefited from it. And I’ve carried that through now to do, I’ve completed the E124, E115 and I’m now on to U212.

So it’s five years! I can’t believe it’s been five years that I’ve been studying with the OU, and now I just think I would be at a loss if I wasn’t studying through it, you kind of, it’s just, it becomes part of your routine. It’s difficult but you do, you do get there, and I think it just benefits me every day, every day.

Because you’re doing all the theory work at home then you’re coming into the nursery environment. You’re working everyday with all your colleagues, the children, all the parents and all the other agencies and people that we deal with day to day. The theory has a real impact on what you’re doing on a day to day basis. I used to come into work and, yeah, I always think I did a pretty good job but now I really know why I’m doing it. I know what difference, what I’m doing with the children, what a huge difference it makes to them, even the little things make a big, big difference, and it just makes the learning experiences that the children have more enriched. And I feel as though I’m much more confident in being able to support their learning and my confidence I think gives them more confidence as well.

Julie Chandler

I’m Julie Chandler, and I’m a local childminder in the area. I work under the name of Clockwork Childcare.

In my early twenties, I was fortunate to work on the stock markets in Canary Wharf, which was fantastic for a few years, and then moved back to the Midlands and started a family, and then we had the transition from professional to professional childcare worker, which was interesting, an interesting journey. I had some hitches along the way but actually ultimately it’s worked for me, it’s worked for our family, and I’m really glad I did it. It’s been good fun.

I had a lot of support from our local council, our local children service at the time who provide many free courses, short courses, sort of six week courses to go on to prepare you for what it entails and to make the whole process legal. So that was really helpful. It was quite a smooth transition.

We did various courses from health and safety, first aid, food hygiene, safeguarding children. I mean the list is really endless. You can go on sort of training and retraining yourself throughout your career as a child carer I think.

We were quite lucky locally in that the childminders are really supportive of each other, and although we don’t have an official childminding coordinator, we do chat to each other on a regular basis, and we have a group once a week where we get together and talk about any concerns within the childminding system and each other’s vacancies, and we know if we get enquiries, we can direct them to people who have vacancies or have the most suitable setting for that child. Equally, we work very closely with local nurseries, and it’s important for continuity of care for the children. They don’t have to be in one setting to have continuity. As long as everybody’s working towards the same set of rules and for the same goal and then the children can have a nice smooth transition from one setting to another, whether it be on a semi permanent basis or a daily basis if they spend a couple of hours with a childminder a day or six hours in a nursery setting, if we all work together.

I have also been training as a classroom and teaching assistant during the time I’ve been childminding with a view to, possibly, as my children grow up and go to school, moving into a classroom environment. But I feel that everything I do in a childminding setting at the moment is helping me in working towards that end goal.

As a childminder you are responsible solely for everything; you are your own teacher, your own cook, your own caretaker, you are everything.

Kirsty Light

My name is Kirsty Light. I’m an early years development worker at the Lark Children Centre, but I’m also a SENCO and an ENCO. ENCO is Equality Named Coordinator, it’s in charge of equal opportunities and diversity within the centre.

The ENCO role is a role that I’ve developed, we’ve developed over the years. We have a family that came from Angola and mum didn’t speak a lot of English and her children were very young. And when she first came, we developed a relationship over the years where I would learn to speak Portuguese, not very well but I know how to speak a few words of Portuguese she would bring her culture within the centre and she would bring in food and recipes. And every time we have a festival and things like that, we, we provide lots of materials and activities for the children to be very diverse. We have dolls, we have puzzles, we have visits out, we go to festivals. We like to try and make the children more patient and tolerant of each other, be respectful of each other.

When I left school, I went to work in a nursery as a nursery assistant, and I became a single parent so all the time my daughter was growing up, I worked for Social Services. I was providing respite care for foster carers, looking after their children at the weekends to give them a break. Had varying needs of the children I was looking after, one little girl had meningitis which left her severely brain damaged, cerebral palsy, and many other health-related problems, and I looked after those to give the foster carers a break, really. And when my daughter grew up and was a bit more independent at school, I decided that I would go back into child care and then I started here.

Being here has given me a good link with the school. We have many good opportunities to train here. When many of us are in the process of studying for a degree in early years and I would like to take that further and actually have a teaching degree and actually move into primary schools at the end.