As we rush to the end of a very speedy 2012, I thought I would review the year through the lenses of my 42 blogs. From RiRi to the Spice Girls and Bedouin Tents to Scottish Islands, it’s clear that LEYF has had an eventful year.

Back in January 2012, we started the year with interest rate rises, higher unemployment, problems in the Eurozone, freakish weather and the promise of deflation. Quite frankly, we needed neither Nostradamus nor the I Ching for predictions on how to navigate the year, as such things seem to be regular occurrences nowadays – and all evidence indicates that 2013 will begin along very similar lines. These realities have meant a year of keeping our noses at LEYF just above the waterline, with a great deal of pressure on the front line in our nurseries to keep occupancy up and debt down. Not the easiest task, even with the stalwart support of our Central Office team. Consequently, the debate about child poverty remained live throughout the year and featured in my blog at least six times. Just to remind you, my I Ching reading for LEYF for 2012 said:

Work on what has been spoiled;

Has supreme success;

It furthers one to cross the great water,

Afterwards there is order

Not so far from the truth then as we consider progressions and challenges over the past 12 months!

Earlier in the year we began preparing for the Olympics and, like any good organisation, we had a plan. Luckily, we never had to use it. Instead, like James Bond we whisked across London on foot, bus and ‘Boris Bike’  – and in the case of our Facilities Manager April running, as we brought our own special light (in the shape of our very own Olympic-style torch) to every LEYF nursery, and in so doing created a piece of art that exceeds anything the Turner Prize has ever honoured.

The issue of feminism was raised early this year with the celebration of Little Women’s Christmas in January. While we focused on parents continually throughout the year, we also examined the role of mothers who got bashed for wanting to work. Our annual Margaret Horn Lecture was given over entirely to examining how we can help women excel in the workplace. The criticism against mothers felt like a re-run of the 1970s, prompting this working mother to resurrect my old Spare Rib and Virago books. Ah, such nostalgic memories for the days of ‘Reclaiming the Night’ marches in London.

Humanising capitalism was also a key theme of the year. Occupy London made its rather biblical mark on the steps of St Paul’s cathedral in direct response to the moral failing of banks, as they thrived to the benefit of overpaid staff and the detriment of the poor. Social Enterprise featured in the media as a palatable version for transforming the way we operate. We were proud therefore to be the first social and childcare business to win the ‘Transformational Change’ category of the National Business Awards; a sign of things to come perhaps? Much will depend on the growing availability of social finance and the jury is still out on that.

Leadership was a subject of debate as Boris retained the crown of London’s Mayor and Bob Diamond lost his sparkle. For a while we were able to think more publicly about the importance of good, wise and steady leadership. Sadly, with the phone hacking scandal, the Leveson Report and poor leadership at the BBC unmasked, we saw and heard a lot about unsustainable leadership and not enough about how to lead with integrity, honesty and as a true custodian of the nation’s interests. Radio 4′s Women’s Hour seems to be trying to re-balance this with a bid to name the 100 most influential women leaders. I just hope they think outside the box and not rely on the same old… (Question Time comes to mind!)

Meanwhile, there were changes in Early Years – such as the new Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), a fresh Ofsted regime and the change of Government Minister. Other things remained unchanged however, particularly the issue of how to make childcare affordable. This unfortunately remains unanswered and unanswerable, unless we strip down the effective management of funds and its reallocation against societal objectives of what we want for our children.

My blog will always feature things we do and try-to-do at LEYF. Some areas of note have included developing the notion of cultural capital, particularly with regards to language, art, music and food. Just last week, the Ofsted report said that children from deprived homes were still not achieving a level playing field with their more advantaged peers. It also indicated the gap could be as wide as 19 months by the time they get to school. It’s a shocking statistic and one that everyone at LEYF feels we can positively affect. Hence our growth strategy, with the aim of replicating what has been dubbed ‘the LEYF sum’; where a child spends a minimum of 15 hours a week for 36 months in a high quality LEYF nursery, with additional support for parents to help develop a good home learning environment. It was the theme of our heart-warming Staff Conference where we were joined by six Scottish colleagues and Paul Brannigan, lead actor of the Angel’s Share - a film that summed up the plight of so many young people who had a poor start in life. It’s certainly one for the Christmas present list.

So as this year draws to a close, our nursery children, parents and staff are all enjoying festive concerts, parties and family events to mark the Christmas season. As part of this, our nurseries are visiting local care homes to allow the children in our care to bring songs of good cheer to their older neighbours. It truly gladdens my heart, as loneliness, isolation and the separation of the generations are the biggest failing of our modern society.

Next year maybe the importance of childcare will be on everyone’s lips. Amidst scenes of the Christmas nativity and the expectation of the birth of a Royal baby in the New Year, our future as a nation may yet take on a golden glow. I wonder, will the three wise men include Mr Gove, our Secretary of State for Education, bringing with him gifts of frankincense, gold and myrrh – or better still, funds and positive policy? Will our star rise in the sky and shine a light on what we do? We will have to wait and see. In the meantime, I best be quick if I’m to write that letter to Santa…

Merry Christmas to you all and a Happy New Year!

…till 2013.

I must admit that I was slightly worried about the Olympics. Not quite a naysayer but wary all the same. Like all ex Girl Guides, I had us planning from April and was willing to buy campbeds so staff could stay the night. Fortunately, we needed none of this.  Instead of the increase in traffic we saw a 30% reduction. It was blissful. Public transport was brilliant and everything ran like clockwork. So well done to everyone. Only now, as the first step in the Olympic legacy, please can we keep the same traffic systems so travel and traffic life will never go back to normal?

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Contrast this time last year; a far cry from the public support and camaraderie of this past two weeks. The same visitors, delighted by this year’s Londoners friendliness, were watching in horror last summer as many young people tried to burn their own neighbourhoods. This year there are no flaming buildings or police in riot gear, but instead London is being congratulated by Olympic visitors for the tolerance and patience of both local citizens and volunteers, not to mention sensitive and effective policing. I’ve just been listening to Luis Fernandez, Deputy Minister of Sport in Brazil on Radio 4, confirm this view of the London Olympics; referring to G4S security management as the only disaster. (Note to UK Government – consider more social businesses for such contracts. Look how well GLL managed their contract at the Aquatic Centre; that would be another great legacy.)

So, better systems to reduce traffic would be one legacy, more social enterprises contracted to run national events would be another legacy. The third would be getting sport and sporting behaviour more effectively embedded in school life. (Ironically, less traffic might mean more children playing out, and so running about getting fit.)

And now physical is a prime subject in the revised EYFS, we better start with the earliest years and the youngest children; it would be good for our staff too.   Either way, given that apparently the whole nation is plagued with obesity, poor attitude, poor spatial awareness and fear of risk and competition, it seems almost a miracle that we ended up third in the medal league with a record 65 medals – our best record yet!

Tessa Jowell, the shadow Olympics minister, has very sensibly called for cross-party consensus on a 10-year plan to build on the public enthusiasm for sport after London 2012:

One of the reasons the Olympics have been so successful in their planning and execution is that all the parties have worked together in the national interest, built a national consensus about how to deliver the Olympics. I think that sense of unity of purpose should be applied to delivering this legacy.

What a good idea; anything that avoids the unhelpful and sometimes juvenile bickering that gets in the way of great ideas. That said, there is already a lot of bickering among the parties about selling off sports fields. I do hope that their idea of a legacy will ensure that every child has the opportunity to play a range of sport and not just fixate on two hours a week chasing a ball around a field. I might have got more into sport if I could have learned tennis or handball instead of the obligatory Camogie, a ball game with the associated elements of kamikaze.

In her comments, Jowell highlighted the wider benefits of sport for children – from improved behaviour, attendance and punctuality to evidence of better academic results. Others link sport and the Olympics with national identity. These may all be true and relevant, but when they are touched by the politics wand, the fairy dust quickly becomes sawdust, as politics always manages to kill dead any spontaneous enthusiasm and groundswell action. My heart sinks when I hear fun activities linked to bigger moral and social forces. It’s probably how many small children feel when showing a painting to the teacher.  She responds earnestly with “Tallulah, how lovely – do tell me all about your painting.” “Oh God,” thinks Tallulah, “just say you like it and let me be.”

So let the legacy be that we held a great event. London was exemplary and preparation counted for a lot. We pulled together and supported the athletes with great warmth and enthusiasm. We watched many young people show us how to be good at something. We recognised the coaches and those quiet supporters that help people achieve. We liked what we saw, and we want more of it; we want our children to be able to do this more easily. Let’s open our hearts and our pockets and make it happen, but leave the grandstanding and the politics on the side-lines.

According to Downing St, isolation and loneliness are more dangerous to our health than smoking.  Well as the saying goes, tell me about it! But why do we need Downing St to tell us this?  We have been saying this forever. It’s one of the main reasons why at LEYF we have a multi-generational approach to how we work.

One of my many habits (the number increases with age) is listening to Desert Island Discs.  It’s a great place to hear what people think about their lives.  I was very touched by a woman who talked about her loneliness since being widowed.  She said:

I have plenty of things to do with people but I have no one to do nothing with.”

It’s an expression used this week by Esther Rantzen who is setting up a helpline called the Silver Line for older people to share worries, get advice and maybe get linked into local services. I am not sure about the name though, sounds more like a bus network to me.

Still, it was the horror of loneliness that made me so passionate about doing things from a multi-generational perspective. Just take a moment to look out the window and it does not take long to pick up the loneliness vibe.  We are not helping either by introducing those awful self-service check out machines at supermarkets. Apart from the fact that they don’t seem to work most of the time, some people have no interaction with another human being for days on end – so imagine when they finally get to the supermarket, only to find they have to talk to the woman from the Sat Nav school of communication. No thank you.  It’s another nail in the loneliness coffin: no bus conductors, few officials to chat to, limited local police officers on the street and so eventually barely a soul it seems to even pass the time of day. Humans are social.  We need to be social to survive.

Staff at LEYF have responded remarkably well to our multi-generational way of doing things.  For instance, last week saw Julie Weiss and her nursery team at Luton Street begin a series of six weekly activity sessions with older people (above), spending time together to make things with the children. Some people may think this all a tad trivial, but I remember how Jo Lax (our manager at Holcroft) found herself shocked and rather distressed at the end of one Pancake Day she had hosted for older people in her nursery’s community, as an elderly lady came and said

Thank you. This keeps me wanting to stay alive, otherwise I wouldn’t bother.”

But we know that isolation is not just about being old; again why we have a multi-generational approach.  We are always meeting people who have moved to London, only to find themselves isolated and not knowing what to do.  That’s why we are starting a TimeBank.  We have lonely Dads, especially those who are no longer working, at home with their children and not sure how to engage with other parents.  Dad’s sessions like those run by Marion at Carlton Hill are as much about this as giving Dads a safe space to play with their children.

Some of our apprentices, barely 17 years old, come to LEYF feeling isolated and very alone in a crowd. It takes the skill of the tutor to engage with them and help them become part of a friendship network.

Our Children Centres have to be multi-generational, as we have to find ways to help people make friends and get to know one another; so many mothers are lonely, especially those who have come from abroad, either with their high flying husbands or as economic migrants.

Loneliness is the scariest thing out there. We can’t build a better future for London’s children if we don’t at least try to create ways of reducing loneliness.  And we can’t afford to fail, lest it also become our own inevitable fate.

Footnotes:

I must remind every reader of this blog that children, staff and the occasional parent from our Carlton Hill Community Nursery will soon have their 15 minutes of fame on Channel 4, as part of the three part series ‘Daddy Daycare‘. So make sure you set your Sky+ or Freeview recorders for 8pm. Starting this Wednesday, February 15, Carlton Hill will feature on episode #2 (Feb 22), so please do tune in – and let us know what you think in the usual channels!

Final mention this week must go to one of currently two male nursery managers at LEYF, David Stevens at the Angel, who is using findings from our own action research to present for a second time at BECERA. In fact, he’s not the only member of LEYF staff (male or female) presenting this year. So thanks and congratulations to you all – simply fantastic stuff!

Where has the month gone? I am scared by the speed by which our lives pass; it seems we have so little time to make any real, lasting difference. As a result, I have spent most of January talking to people and confirming our plans to really grow the organisation. The Government suggests that we have two alcohol free days a week free.  No chance this month. Neither did I get a chance to attend any of the Samba classes that have been happening across LEYF in preparation for our annual New Year Party this evening, when over 200 of our staff are due to party on late into the night (although I will be gone by 10 ish!).

Outside of LEYF, the world remains a rather unsettled place. The economy is not recovering, the Eurozone is a disaster, child poverty continues to grow as does unemployment among the young. There is an edgy feel about.  The politicians talk about creative capitalism or moral capitalism.  Young people apparently consider the whole thing ‘Peak’. So we have a choice: we sit tight and ride the storm, keep calm and do nothing, whinge, run for the hills or see things like the Chinese do, that every crisis is just as much an opportunity. Interestingly, we have just entered the year of the Dragon: a time for wisdom, strength, benevolence and good fortune.

Back at LEYF, we have decided we can expand our pioneering approach across London. It’s a simple enough model: community nurseries with a range of fees, alongside apprenticeships all wrapped within a multi-generational approach. This ambition is only possible because I trust that LEYF staff will come with me.  We may lose a few people along the way, but that may be right for both them and us; working for a small organisation is not quite the same as a big group or a network of internal franchisees.

Why do it? Why risk upsetting the apple cart? Because we have a duty to share what we do well for small children. Child poverty continues to rise to the detriment of the child, the family and society as a whole. Many people are lost and lonely, so why should we not roll out our way of doing things to benefit many more people?  The bankers and many other private businesses are growing despite often appalling records; they appear to show neither remorse nor a duty of care to their customers. So if we can do something that brings a social good, it is only right that we make the effort to do more of what we already do well.

The risks are immense. Can we keep the quality? Will staff remain motivated? Can we create the right support structure? Will parents abandon us? The signs are that none of this will happen anymore than it would happen in a smaller organisation. The success is having sharp, intelligent, knowledgeable, skilled and entrepreneurial leaders across the organisation, individuals who also come with a natural and clear sense of social duty, coupled with the ability to connect with the community.

It’s probably a big ask, but when 650,000 children across London live in poverty, it’s probably the right question.

As Goethe says:

Seize this very minute; what you can do, or dream you can, begin it; Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

I have not written a blog for a week because some of you said you could not keep up with my output.  Others have since asked ‘where is the blog?’ So I hope to now see a huge surge in readership.  Either way…

It has been a week of conferences and events; not least one where I spent the morning talking about retaining good staff at the Nursery World Business Summit, and the afternoon joining Neil King our Head of HR as he presented on the concept of wellbeing at work. Neil is an engaging presenter, so I was very proud to witness such a good performance.

At this particular event, the question posed by the employers and HR people was this: how do you recruit and retain good staff in a sector that is by its very nature not well rewarded?  Interestingly, pay was not a feature of retention, especially for those moving up the scale.  More crucial factors are job satisfaction, good conditions, fun activities, induction, training, working for an organisation that shows its staff in the best light; and most of all a manager who makes you feel important.  I often say to staff that we have a long way to go to praise our staff with the same vigour and enthusiasm and warmth that we use when praising the children.  There is, of course, a whole set of reasons for this and one is culture.

Earlier this week, Neil Fenton and I attended a Leadership Bootcamp organised for all 25 winners of the Big Venture Challenge.  I had no idea what to expect, but I wore boots just in case. The trainer began the day by asking if anyone was from North America.  There was silence, and then she said

Well, I am going to ask you to do something very North American and give yourselves a round of applause.” (or bualadh bos as we say inIreland).

The group responded obediently with a timid clap, and I cringed.  To me all this is a bit over the top; praise has to be earned and valued by those receiving it.  At that point, I hadn’t done anything that I thought merited a bualadh bos except to find the venue and arrive on time.  (Actually, the whole of LEYF is probably applauding now, as my time-keeping can be somewhat erratic!)

Praise giving and receiving in the UK is much more of a timorous  affair. We tend to be diffident about drawing attention to ourselves, and in some ways that shows sensitivity and courtesy.  But we do have to get a better balance; we need to be more able to praise more often and in a way that is valued by those giving and receiving.  Thank you for turning up is never going to do it – unless of course it’s snowing and you have walked across two boroughs to get to work.

On Friday this week, we will be having our Annual Staff Conference in Pimlico Academy, a state of the art local community academy run by an Irish head teacher.  When we first met we both commented on the difference between our own school buildings and the academy. The only similarity to mine was that we had two staircases, except one was for the nuns and dignitaries.

The conference and the attention to detail we try to apply is one way we celebrate and give public acclamation to each and every staff member. It’s a great occasion that sees the whole of LEYF come together.  It might sound cheesy but it’s not; it’s good old fashioned meeting up, eating, playing, laughing, learning, catching up and sharing ideas via the roving Vox Pop.  We will also be catered for by LEYF chefs, which guarantees us really good food.

We have had great conferences since we started them five years ago, and this one will be no exception – with speakers including Chief Superintendent John Carnochan from the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit, talking about the power of early intervention (something he knows a lot about, as he sees the results in action every day).  In fact, Scotland is already a key feature of LEYF events in the form of Alice Sharp, a gifted and entertaining presenter who really connects big concepts such as early intervention into real behaviour with children and parents.

Finally this year, we are promised a visit from Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, and I sincerely hope he comes.  I heard him speak with passion about teachers – not that they appeared to value this! – and I want to hear the same power and passion shared with and about Early Years at our conference.  A public affirmation for each and every LEYF staff member from the top.  So again, I hope he comes.

After the day’s opening speeches, the day is littered with great learning workshops which aim to stretch, extend, collect and collate all the things we do and can do to make the whole of LEYF communication rich. From, flip charts to post-its, blackberries to iPhones, we will do our best to ensure plenty of shout-outs and tweeting.  So, if you want to hear about what’s going on or want to interact with one of the best sector, staff-lead learning events, send us a message with the hashtag #leyfconf11!

This weekend the TV presenters continually referred to the joy and happiness created by the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton.  Images of laughing people enjoying street parties, smiling at cameras and looking the epitome of happy, connected and positive citizens dominated our TVs.

Why then do we need Action for Happiness, a new organisation set up by Professor Richard Layard, Geoff Mulgan and Dr. Anthony Seldon to challenge the level of unhappiness in the UK, which despite our material comfort is much higher than 50 years ago?  They want us to focus on what really makes us happy: healthy relationships and meaningful activities, such as lifelong learning and doing things for others; they want us to reject the dominant culture of materialism and self-obsessed individualism.

I suspect Action for Happiness likes Royal Wedding street parties, however sadly infrequent they may be to make much difference in the long term.  What they appear to be more concerned with is the more enduring negative impact of our predilection for regular reality programmes, such as The Only Way isEssex, which although parody materialism and self- obsession also retain a sneaking admiration for both.  This particular programme amounts to one hour each week of amusing but vacuous discussion about the key challenges in life: seemingly hair extensions, nails, Botox and men telling women to be serious and “none of your lipstick and nails talk”.  It does not take long to realise that Action for Happiness has its work cut out.

Many years ago (1993), Professor Richard Layard gave the Annual Margaret Horn Lecture here at LEYF on the economic value of happiness.  As always, it was a thought-provoking lecture, at the end of which I tentatively asked whether we should measure the happiness of children, which to me is the real acid test of a happy society.  Some years later, in 2009, Professor Layard produced a report called A Good Childhood, commissioned by the Children’s Society and penned together with Judy Dunn. They noted that children in the UK enjoy good health and can look forward to long lives; they have foreign holidays and a wealth of consumer goods; 90% of children over 11 have their own mobile phone, whilst 80% of 5-16 year olds have their own television.  However, despite the level of material goods available to them, children were on the whole more stressed, more violent and less happy than their peers of the seventies or eighties.  They concluded that children did not thrive in a  consumer culture that promotes ‘excessive individualism’, and in effect children would only truly succeed in a society where people care for each other, promoting each other’s good as well as their own.

When David Cameron became Conservative leader in 2005, he said gauging people’s feelings was one of the central political issues of our time; his mantra was happiness, happiness, happiness.  In fact, this is now to be examined as part of the annual Office for National Statistics nationwide Integrated Household Survey.

But what will it tell us about happiness?  Will materialism be an issue in this age of austerity? Will self obsession be the type commonly associated with depression and despair?  Or will we find an increased level of happiness as people begin to rely more on each other and their own abilities and get a kick out of that?  Either way, happiness is squarely on the agenda – and probably a more important issue for the UK right now than a referendum on AV, especially for children.

So what do we know: the UK was last in the UNESCO Well Being report; A Good Childhood told us that our children are miserable and we need to think about them more.  We have a Social Mobility strategy to address key issues such as increasing child poverty, a widening gap between rich and poor, expensive childcare and Children Centres under threat.  Do we need to hear any more?  Probably not.

What we do need is to finally put children at the heart of Government policies.  The decisions we make today have to be the basis for creating happiness, not for us but for all of our children.  We don’t need any more reports or strategies; we just need to put the child’s voice at the centre and then amplify it, until it rings in our ears and we are forced to listen properly and finally act accordingly.  Nelson Mandela summed it up perfectly when he said:

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”

Related articles

• Happiness: Lessons From a New Science, By Richard Layard (independent.co.uk)
• Charity says spreading joy is they key to happiness (bbc.co.uk)
• Will buying a stranger a coffee enhance your wellbeing? (telegraph.co.uk)

This week I overheard a member of staff commenting on my blog.  She had just begun to read it and was surprised at just how much it told her about what I do; about my efforts to ensure what we do at LEYF influences the world of childcare and so helps to build a better future for children everywhere.

Later in the week we had a staff forum where they made a similar observation, so I thought I would use this week’s blog to sum up our plans for franchising our model; to give some idea of what it might be like if we could successfully scale up and replicate what we do here at LEYF elsewhere. It fits into a particularly busy week of submitting tenders for nurseries, training services and strategic alliances – another means of getting a place at the table. Not surprisingly, I feel like Alice trying to get an invite to the Mad Hatters Tea Party, so we can have a turn to say our piece.

On the subject of tea – an occasion which should, in my humble opinion, be a compulsory 4 o’clock occurrence – it featured quite a few times this week, including a spontaneous invite to share tea at the House of Lords following my outburst at the APPG on Sure Start.

On this occasion, I was provoked by the number of people whinging and complaining about government changes rather than trying to find a solution. It’s all very well saying how everything was wonderful in the past – a fact both inaccurate and irritating, which then just limits any kind of solution-focused approach and so raises my blood pressure!  For my part, I presented the option of a social enterprise Children’s Centre in my usual, outspoken way.  This naturally resulted in a range of responses – including eyes rolling, amusement, attention, clapping and the aforementioned invitation. I avoided any caustic comments by using the time to network with the great and good.

So, given that many of our own staff are beginning to read the blog, below is what I believe a LEYF franchise may mean in ten years time:

• Social enterprise nurseries are now considered the first and natural choice for all parents; they are recognised as having a critical role to play not only in providing the best childcare but also in supporting and connecting families in the local community;
• The design of a specifically social enterprise curriculum ensures social capital for all children;
• Social enterprise nurseries are founded on a principle of supporting and taking care of a child’s wider abilities, leading to a growing sense of social responsibility and a readiness to act; in so doing establishing a greater degree solidarity and tolerance;
• A quality mark exists to help parents clearly identify a social enterprise nursery in a crowded market; the mark is also a form of quality assurance, making sure the values of social enterprise are embedded and implemented to the full;
• Social enterprise childcare has become the leading example of best practice across the sector and so a symbol of quality for all children; no longer locked within such a limiting concept as so often bestowed on PVIs of being simply ‘good enough for the poor and disadvantaged’;
• Social enterprise childcare is now a recognised sector in itself, a real influence on corporate direction, part of corporate management programmes and considered critical to corporate social responsibility;
• The social enterprise childcare sector has become a leading driver for change in public services;
• Clear means of measuring and assessing the associated benefits of a social enterprise approach to childcare have been established and are now widely recognised within ‘value-added’ qualities or transitions, such as improved well-being, employability and active citizenship;
• A strong social enterprise childcare network now exists with the weight and purpose to shape and change both Early Years policy and community regeneration, along with development and contractual procurement on a local, regional, national and international scale;
• Links between social enterprise childcare services and the reduction of child poverty are clear, with a direct and measurable contribution to reducing the 3.9 million children living in poverty, with all the attendant health costs as they become adults;
• An intergenerational approach to everything is explicitly embedded in the social enterprise childcare model, recognising that sometimes the younger generation is best placed to deal with issues challenging their community such as drugs, disadvantage, poverty and race.

Does the above sound like a dream to you – or a nightmare?  Let me know what you think or how you see the future of social enterprise or childcare.  Simply rate or comment on this post below and share with colleagues via Twitter, Facebook or email using the usual, handy links!

After much debate, discussion and procrastination, we have finally dipped our toes into the wild world of online conversations, otherwise know as the blogosphere – and hey… isn’t it exciting!

At its heart, our blog hopes to echo the current government’s view of a Big Society, namely that we are all in this together.  For us, that means having conversations with everyone who values the true importance of children in that society.  We want to use our blog to have a big conversation about what needs to be done if we are to make it right for children; we want to hear ideas and action that can make life better for us all.  We firmly believe that when you wrap everything around the child things really do get better. It’s the basis of our call for intergenerational services – especially Children’s Centres, which are the most natural hub of any neighbourhood and so should be where all kinds of intergenerational activity, starting with the youngest child, take place.

A metaphor for this site can be summed up by the experiences of three LEYF staff who recently put their annual leave to incredible use, by heading off to Uganda to see how we might work together with War Child. Overwhelmed with the human tragedy of living a whole childhood surrounded by conflict, but heartened by the palpable joie de vivre around them, they quickly found their place and value; introducing play-based learning to the community’s very willing and interested Ugandan Early Years teachers, many of whom care for up to 200 children a day, children that have never learned how to play. It’s no doubt somewhat clichéd, but the staff came back humbled, having already begun to complain a little less and take a little more action. In some ways, they formed a vision of one small part in this Big Society.

As the individual charged with inspiring debate on this new, hi-tech platform, I look forward to raising the voice of the child, helping to place it in this new world of community responsibility. Rather well-known for speaking my mind, I hope to provoke fresh thinking, particularly from those who work with children in nurseries and who are passionate as I am.

So talk to us, use the power of social networking to share your views and provide solutions.  Let’s blog a positive, upbeat and constructive message; let’s celebrate our many successes and take action to improve and overcome the challenges. Let’s be in this together.