Harpurs Hill Children and Family Centre
Children’s profile: 0-4 year olds
Organisation profile: Children and Family Centre providing early years programmes, home visiting and parental engagement and activities
Project overview: Creche (1-3 year old)
The centre to continued to provide support to both children and parents throughout lockdown and employed a range of approaches to do this, including social media. An open Facebook page allowed staff to share story telling sessions and practical and support and guidance on both child development and Covid-19. Closed Facebook and Whatapps groups were set up for each of the creche groups allowed staff to tailor in information to the children and families and for the sharing of queries, information and support. This approach was complemented by regular phone contact and face to face contact through garden gate visits. This contact was co-ordinated with the keyworker system already in place with the keyworker carrying out weekly phone calls and fortnightly visits.
There was a focus on social and emotional development and developing curiosity in learning through play and doing this in partnership with parents was important. To achieve this, two play activities were uploaded to the closed Facebook groups every week and once a fortnight the keyworker would deliver resources for the activities during the ‘garden gate visit’. Parents uploaded videos and pictures to the groups.
The complementary approaches helped build a sense of community and reduce isolation and parents reported that children loved seeing the pictures and videos.
