Why social enterprises in the early years sector are a force for good

The early years operates within a market model, which means there are a range of business models providing a service to families. For example, the nursery sector in England is made up of large nursery chains (18 per cent), voluntary sector nurseries and pre-schools including charities, local authorities and social enterprises (11 per cent), and the rest are private or family-owned single-site or small chains of nurseries. In Scotland, 50 per cent of provision is delivered by the public sector, 21 per cent by the voluntary sector and 30 per cent by private providers. It’s a smorgasbord.

Social enterprises are a small but important part of the early years group. A childcare social enterprise blends social and commercial goals together in the pursuit of a fairer society using a pedagogy designed to deliver quality to benefit all children and families but especially those most disadvantaged.

Not all social enterprise nurseries operate in the same way, but by their very nature, social enterprises are a compassionate response to complex social issues. They offer a promising pragmatic and innovative alternative to tackling intransigent social justice issues such as child poverty.

The managers of social enterprises are often called social entrepreneurs, as they develop ways to catalyse change and address social needs by, for example, ensuring places for disadvantaged children or building nurseries in poor communities or training apprentices from those communities. They are expected to explore and exploit opportunities to create social value to meet social needs. Some probably operate as a social enterprise but don’t realise it.

MAKE CONNECTIONS

ECEC social enterprises have their own way of operating which is often challenging and can be a lonely place. Connecting within the general social enterprise space is helpful but not specific enough to provide a space to examine specific ECEC challenges. We have therefore created the Early Years Social Enterprises Collective (EYSEC).

Our collective will be formed by like-minded passionate people who want to link together and develop a constant and constructive dialogue to grow a sense of identity, share common values, build trust, disseminate information, challenge, question, rethink concepts and assumptions and make sense of a messy market space by making connections, coaching each other and addressing problems together to deliver collective social impact.

Putnam (2000) suggests that collective skills, knowledge and experience ensures greater returns in the quality of life for all, but especially children. He said that social capital is second only to poverty in the breadth and depth of its positive effect on children’s lives.

Our collective is shaped by the following approach:

• We are a collective of early years social entrepreneurs who want to learn and share with each other.
• We will create a simple database and director of members to track member information and interactions.
• We have a Steering Board made from the members to advise on direction of travel.
• We are all about sharing and giving each other a platform.
• We will offer coaching and mentoring to each other.
• We will agree to share each other’s work using social media.
• We will have a feedback mechanism to benefit from the contributions of members.
• We will advocate on behalf of the group and engage with relevant people.
• We will share policies, studies and research that will add value.
• We will engage with online collaboration platforms for virtual meetings and to foster resource sharing and joint projects.
• We will encourage Special Interest Groups that will create their own subgroups based on their interest.
• We understand that a live network needs to be prepared for change and reconfiguration, to keep pace with evolving needs.
• We will design a means of auditing our impact to track the impact of the network, including membership numbers, events and attendance at meetings, and number of people connecting to develop shared projects.
• To begin with, our collective is an email connection, but when we get enough people, we will develop a web page where we can post information. In the meantime, we will provide you with access to the London Institute of Early Years web page as a means of connecting with us.
  
  

GET INVOLVED

• If you would like to join us, please email june@leyf.org.uk