Co-production for Better Inclusion in the Early Years

It is never too late to celebrate amazing co-production work!

We recently received an article from Carrie Mooney (Manchester City Council’s Lead for Early Years Access & Sufficiency) who, with some input from Ann Van Dyke MBE (consultant working with Dingley’s Promise charity on the Early Years Inclusion Project), speaks about the pivotal role that co-production and partnership working have played in the development and promotion of inclusive practice training in the Early Years sector.

Please have a read and continue further to the bottom to see how you can get involved and/or how to access the free training modules that are part this project.

The 1st to 5th of July is National Co-production Week and Dingley’s Promise Inclusive Practice training would not be where it is without a strong commitment to co-production.

Co-production lies at the heart of the City’s drive to improve access to early learning entitlements for young children with SEND. When Manchester City Council was invited to be part of the Dingley’s Promise Inclusive Practice Training pilot and to bring this training to the early years sector in Manchester we wanted to ensure that it had parents’/carers’ seal of approval.

We were impressed to note that the training was developed by specialist early educators working at inclusive nurseries in the South of England and that staff who manage and work in Dingley’s settings, had used the learning from their day to day interactions with families to shape the course content.

The quality of the training, which consistently receives very high satisfaction rates, is partly due to the involvement of parents/carers in its development. All courses are proofed by a panel of practitioners and parents, illustrating that better results are possible when we include input from the people with the most to gain or lose.

The fact that Manchester and 31 other LAs have been able to access the training programme is thanks to a Comic Relief funded implementation project which seeks to upskill 10,000 members of the Early Years workforce to meet the needs of children with additional needs. The Comic Relief bid was written with a strand dedicated to the co-production of the whole project. The role profile, welcome sessions, regular communications, and recruitment support provided through the roll out of the Dingley’s Promise training programme were all developed to ensure that parents are:

• part of local stakeholder group planning with local authorities;
• supporting local delivery by promoting the training to both families and practitioners;
• providing regular feedback about delivery and impact locally;
• feeding into the national steering group to influence central government policy-making;
• delivering activity with staff by presenting at webinars, sharing case studies, and feedback.

When we launched the Dingley’s Promise training in Manchester, in March 2023, it was on the back of months of planning and the assembly of a Core Group made up of a broad range of stakeholders from Education, Social Care and Health. We knew how important it was to have input from parents/carers of children with SEND. We had seen the benefits of co-production to the Local Offer and to the city’s Anti-Poverty Strategy, so were pleased to welcome Jordan Navarro, the Chair of Manchester Parent Carer Forum, to the group. Within a few months he was joined by Karen Woodhouse and Nuzhat Atif, both of whom are active members of the Parent Carer Forum.

Jordan, Karen and Nuzhat bring with them a wealth of lived experience which improves the decision making and direction of the Core Group. They can talk with authority on the experience of navigating services on behalf of their child, give insight on what it’s like to engage with professionals and local or statutory processes, and feedback on language that creates barriers or challenges. They can raise the real-life challenges other families might face with any plans or proposals being discussed. Our parent/carer representatives provide crucial constructive challenge to the Core Group, reminding us of what’s important to families and providing feedback on what works and what doesn’t.

The parent representatives have also provided access to a network of other families with children with SEND through the already established mechanisms in place. For example, the Parent Carer Forum has played a crucial role in ensuring consultations reach families and that they are responded to.

A key moment was when Karen produced a blog post about her experience of trying to secure childcare and a school place for her child with special educational needs when they were younger, highlighting some of the specific challenges and frustrations faced by parents/carers of children with SEND when navigating systems and processes. We shared Karen’s blog post in our quarterly Dingley’s Promise newsletter to all primary schools, nurseries, childminders, health teams and other
partners to raise awareness of the potential barriers to access and to promote conversations about how these could be mitigated.

The blog was very well received and reinforced the importance of improving the skills and awareness of the workforce and providing fresh impetus to the implementation of the training programme. It was also picked up and shared nationally by Dingley’s Promise and the Comic Relief pilot, who used it as an example to other Local Authorities on how to tap into and share the lived experiences of families.

We have also benefited from the individual and unique skills that our parent/carer representatives have. For example, Jordan advises the Core Group on communication methods and in particular social media strategies, and Karen’s role as an Autism Navigator means that she has knowledge of the issues from different angles.

Finally, our parent/carer representatives have accessed some of the Dingley’s Promise training modules and can therefore speak with confidence on how they think the training will reduce the barriers children with SEND might face in accessing their early education entitlements. Ensuring that co-production is at the heart of this project has been key to Manchester being recognised as the highest performing Local Authority out of 32 participating LAs – an achievement that couldn’t have been realised without the contribution of our parent/carer representatives.

Get Involved

If you who work in or with children in the Early Years (age 0-5) in Manchester and you would like to access free training to build your knowledge and confidence on working with young children with Special Educational Needs or Disabilities (SEND), please visit dingley.org.uk/dingleys-promise-training/comic-relief to sign up for the Early Years Inclusion Programme.

Whether you’re a SENCo, Health practitioner, childminder, or a local authority Early Years staff, you will find some or all of the training modules helpful for your practice.

The programme can also benefit parents and carers of children with SEND so, if you are a Manchester resident and have a child with additional needs or disability, we encourage you to sign up as well.

If you’re a parent/carer and would like to become a parent representative in the local steering group and/or the national parent board and/or other pieces of work that could benefit inclusion in the Early Years sector, please contact us so we can discuss how you can get involved. 🙂