Research nurseries: How a nursery in Sheffield is using research to inform its practice

Set in the deprived Shirecliffe area of Sheffield, Meadows Nursery opened during the pandemic as part of the Early Years Community Research Centre (EYCRC) – an ambitious multi-agency project to improve local early years services and reduce poverty.

The 40-place setting is unusual – it is part-funded by Save the Children, and it is run directly by Sheffield Hallam University alongside Watercliffe Meadow Primary School, with students of all subjects from architecture to linguistics using it as part of their studies. Nursery staff themselves are trained in trauma-informed practice, a research-driven approach that has had a transformational impact on their relationships with children and parents. While about 80 per cent of the families at Meadows had involvement with other agencies before joining, the extra funding from Save the Children has allowed the nursery to offer funded places as soon as a child turns two, a term earlier than usual.

RESEARCH PROJECTS

Sally Pearse, director of the EYCRC and strategic lead for early years at Sheffield Hallam University, says the research grounding has led to multiple opportunities for both students and the nursery to benefit from each other's skills and expertise. ‘We involve a lot of students in real-life challenges, which really enhances their training. We’ve had Early Childhood Studies students working with architecture students to look at the outdoor learning spaces at the nursery; we’ve had film production students editing the filming we’ve done with parents; and in the nursery, we’ve had disabilities studies students looking at how inclusive we are. The university can see the benefits for the future workforce,’ she says.

Other research has focused on the impact of early access to two-year-old provision for children and their parents. The project carried out in-depth interviews with five of the 20 families who have accessed the support so far. Pearse says the early access was ‘crucial’ for parents’ mental health in the pandemic. ‘They felt so isolated… they were concerned about whether they were managing to be good parents and whether they could support their child's development.’

Parents have reported benefitsfor both themselves and their children. ‘Her socialisation has got better and her speech has come on profoundly, so she is just blossoming and I’m just loving it,’ one said. Another parent said, ‘I don’t usually like making friends. But quite a few of the mums here that I talk to, they go to breakfast club now so I sit with them.’

It is important to maintain a culture of doing research ‘with’ children and parents, not ‘to’ them, Pearse says. ‘It's not about putting your community under the microscope,’ she adds. The university uses Save the Children's approach of co-designing research with families, which means that parents are involved in discussing projects, helping to shape which research takes place.

Nursery practitioners also contribute to the research agenda. Sheffield Hallam used an approach called ‘The listening project’, based on a Radio 4 programme where people are brought together in a pod to capture their conversations. The university developed this as a research methodology, introducing prompt cards to trigger talk about practitioners’ experiences.

Despite the fact that working at Meadows can be challenging, Pearse found that lots of staff were very positive about their experiences. She says, ‘They felt they were seen as really skilled practitioners, in a way that perhaps hadn’t been seen by families they served in previous nurseries. They were getting experience of special educational needs with multi-agency working, working with a larger community team improved their sense of professional identity, and the feedback they were getting from families about how crucial this service is to them, it actually enhanced their job satisfaction.’

SURE START MODEL

The nursery also has access to in-house services and wider professionals – with a prevention worker on site and a family support worker at the setting one day per week and access to health visitors through the EYCRC. The aim is to work collaboratively and communicate effectively so parents do not need to keep repeating the same information and processes with multiple professionals, which can sometimes be a barrier to accessing much-needed support.

As well as the high levels of external support, the focus on parental engagement means the setting also works a lot on meeting the needs of the whole family. Deputy manager Leanna Clarke says, ‘It's very rewarding, identifying what these families need and being able to fully put that in place and support the families. Other settings don’t always have that time to support the families there and then so they do a lot of signposting; we do a lot in-house. I do a lot of parental engagement work and safeguarding, my door is always open for parents to just drop in. It's probably quite a different role to what other deputy managers might do.’

Pearse, who previously ran a Sure Start nursery and was a Children's Centre teacher, says, ‘I know that this is the way that we change outcomes for children and families. You work with them so holistically in the early years. The work with families is equally as important as the work we do with the children.’

Asking parents about their challenges led to the idea of a breakfast club for parents. The club is attended each week by 25 to 30 of the 40 families at the nursery. Shelter and Bags of Taste pop in to offer support with a range of issues from housing to finance and making low-cost meals. Parents have a say in who they would like to visit and which topics they would like support with.

The breakfast club has acted as a gateway to better parental engagement with other initiatives, and parents are increasingly taking up family learning options in English, maths and child development and signing up to the Startwell programme about supporting children's wellbeing.

Clarke adds, ‘We had a parent who said, “I don’t want to come to any groups, I’m not really a people person”, and now she is probably the person who is here the most. She is the one encouraging other parents to come along to different workshops.’

This Sure Start model operated by Meadows is no longer the norm, and Pearse's fear is that further budget cuts will result in families being pushed to the edge. However, the EYCRC and its research aims to demonstrate the wide range of outcomes that are improved by good-quality early years practice.

‘Recent research reports that have come out are only now showing the impact on teenagers of accessing Sure Start services,’ Pearse explains. ‘We know we can have that long-term impact, but it's about somebody having the faith and holding the line for long enough for us to do it.’

MEADOWS NURSERY FACTS

• Opened in April 2021.
• Part of the Early Years Community Research Centre (EYCRC), made up of a partnership between Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield City Council, Save the Children and local school Watercliffe Meadow Community Primary School.
• 40 places for two- to four-year-olds, and open to children as soon as they turn two. The nursery encourages transition to local primary schools when the child reaches three years old.
  
  

Trauma-informed approaches

The single biggest impact on the setting, according to Pearse, is the fact that all nursery staff have received training in trauma-informed practice, with two members of staff having completed their diploma with Trauma Informed Schools UK (along with every student teacher from the birth to fives course right through to post-16 receiving this training at the university).

The approach emphasises physical, psychological and emotional safety for all. Staff focus on key relational skills in interactions, such as emotional attunement, validating feelings, displaying empathy and being calming and soothing. Through this relationship they hope to support children to develop the ability to self-regulate and build a positive self-image.

‘In the early years we are often supporting parents who have experienced trauma. Our aim is to build caring, consistent and trusting relationships which support parents to overcome barriers to accessing services and can empower them to re-establish control of their lives. When working with an adult or a child we start from the point of “what has happened to you?”, not “what is wrong with you?”,’ says Pearse.

These techniques have been transformational, according to Pearse, with parents visibly more comfortable and trusting around trained staff. One of the key elements which has enabled the team to develop these positive relationships has been relationship mapping. This practice was developed from previous research on ‘professional love’ and also draws on the Making Caring Common project from Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Staff meet as a team on a regular basis to discuss and reflect on their relationships with children and parents, systematically mapping and monitoring how these change over the course of the year. The tool helps identify patterns of closeness as well as children who might be emotionally distant. Pearse explains, ‘This helps us to identify children and families who may not yet have a strong connection with the nursery team and also provides a place for a professional discussion about children's development and progress where everyone brings a piece of the jigsaw. From these meetings we identify children and families that we may need to reach out to more and take time to build a stronger relationship. This practice enhances our key worker system and ensures that no child or family that may need support slips through the net.’

FURTHER INFORMATION

• Sheffield Hallam runs a free online CPD network which provides a range of training – contact f.a.demissie@shu.ac.uk
• Early years communication guidance from Sheffield Hallam University's social mobility partnership: https://tinytalkers.co.uk
• Making Caring Common at Harvard: https://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/resources-for-educators/relationship-mapping-strategy