Your role in influencing policies and practice in your setting

All ELC practitioners have a role to play in creating inclusive policies that can shape inclusive practice. As already discussed during the previous weeks, your skills and qualities can make a difference to children’s experience in their setting. Positive interactions and warm relationships in your day-to-day interactions can help them to feel that they belong in the setting. A warm ethos in an ELC setting will enable children to flourish and meet their potential.

As well as contributing to promoting a policy of developing positive relationships with children and families, you may be able to lead other changes such as the physical environment in your setting. How a room is laid out can be critical to how much a child can access activities and be included.

It is often the small details that matter more than you might think. Making sure that families and other professionals feel welcome and included makes an important contribution to how you work with others. As discussed in Week 4, simply ensuring that everyone is offered a cup of tea might change the atmosphere and even the outcome of the meeting.

As much as we might want to, it is hard to change everything at once. It can help to spend time looking and thinking about an area of practice or the layout of a room and identify what the gaps are.

Take a look at Figure 6.9.

Figure 6.9  An early years setting

This might look like an inviting space: it has different textures, natural materials and natural light, and there is a selection of books to look at. But how might it look to a child using a wheelchair with the aid of an adult? Is there only one way in? Is there enough room to be side by side with other children?

You need to consider the preferences and needs of the children you are working with. But you also need to think about being flexible and open to change in response to how children use the space.

Perhaps there are too many invitations to climb in this layout? Are there children in your care who are learning how to take care of furniture and resources who might find it hard to resist climbing? Instead of spending time talking to them about their choices, perhaps you could arrange the area differently to make climbing less appealing. You would need to make sure climbing opportunities were available elsewhere.

At the end of this section the extension activity includes resources that you might find helpful if you are considering how to assess or audit your environment.