Early Help Peep: Nottingham

Thanks to Charlotte Haigh, Early Learning Specialist, and colleagues for sharing how they use Peep within their Early Help teams and Children’s Centres in Nottingham.

"In Nottingham City, we use the Peep Learning Together Programme (LTP) as a targeted intervention to support families within the city. Our groups run for 12 weeks. We have established four Peep groups, each of which runs for 12 weeks:

• Watch Me Grow for families with a child 0-9 months,
• Inbetweenies for families with a child 9-18 months,
• Getting Ready for Nursery for families with children age 18 months – 2+ years, and
• Chatter Matters which focuses primarily on communication and language.

Parents complete an evaluation at the end of the course, but also give verbal feedback about things they’ve noticed or tried that week, at the start of each session. Here are some of the things that we’ve heard from families and practitioners:

increasing parents’ confidence and awareness about supporting their children’s development:

Through attending one of our Peep Getting Ready for Nursery courses, parents have reported that they feel a lot more confident in telling stories and singing with their children. One Mum shared that she feels a lot more confident singing with her children at home since attending one of our Peep groups, and her partner has noticed that she sings a lot more with her youngest two children than she did with her eldest. This mum still feels too self-conscious to actively take part in singing during the session, but she and her children spend much more time together at home than in a weekly group, so singing with them at home is where the real difference is made.
Our feedback has also shown that parents are a lot more aware of the importance of mark making, and provide mark making activities more frequently within the home.

In our recent courses, 80% of parents showed an improvement in their confidence to support their child’s learning and development. 72% of families have increased the frequency of mark making activities, and of playing with letters and numbers at home. Over the past few months, 61 children have been tracked in either Communication & Language, Physical development or Personal social and emotional development. All 61 children have shown progress in their development over the 12 week course.

noticing changes and thinking about next steps:

At the start of the Peep course we encourage parents to complete an ‘I can…’ flower so they increase their awareness of what their child can do, and where they are in terms of their developmental milestones. Once these have been completed practitioners are able to plan activities and sessions to support both parents and children in reaching their milestones. Parents are also encouraged at the beginning of each session to feedback on how they found the previous session and how they got on with their ‘Things to do at home’ activity.

One parent has noticed that, since attending one of our Peep groups, her child has started to say words and to count, and has become increasingly more confident to explore the activities available. At the beginning of the course, this child was non-speaking, wasn’t interacting with other children or adults, and gave very little eye contact. He has started to respond during singing time and sometimes joins in with actions, and he is now also giving eye contact when practitioners interact with him.

building relationships – families, practitioners and other professionals:

Parents have fed back that their children have built relationships with other children of a similar age. One mum, who that shared she suffers from anxiety, now looks forward to attending the group each week. Practitioners have worked with mum to help her rationalise her thoughts and prioritise tasks to allow her to feel less anxious. In doing so, mum is now more confident to bring her children to the group on her own.

Providing the Peep programme on a weekly basis for 12 weeks has enabled practitioners to build good relationships with both parents and children. Practitioners are able to address behaviours that a few parents in the group are experiencing. For example, in one of our Getting Ready for Nursery groups practitioners noticed there was a lot of copying behaviours and children were throwing toys/resources. As a result, practitioners modelled to parents how to encourage desirable behaviour and communicate with their children to let them know what they want them to do instead. Practitioners have since commented that they feel the parents within the group have grown in confidence and support each other, as well as asking for help and advice when needed.

During our Watch Me Grow course we look at the topic ‘Food for life’. During this session we invite a health visitor along, to support parents with the latest public health advice on weaning and healthy food choices. Practitioners have found that by partnership working, particularly in the Watch Me Grow groups, parents are less anxious in terms of accessing services and have grown in confidence when it comes to making their own choices for their children.

things we learned – reducing barriers for families:

• Peek into Peep: In Nottingham we run a ‘Peek into Peep’ session in areas where engagement is low or where we don’t receive many referrals. A Peek into Peep session gives parents the opportunity to meet the practitioners that will be delivering the programme beforehand and see what they can expect from a Peep session. This enables families to feel less anxious when they attend the full course, as they have already met the practitioners and know what to expect when they walk in. We have found this to be extremely beneficial for anxious parents. It also allows for partner agencies e.g. midwives, health visitors, social workers etc, to attend the session with their families to see if it is something they would benefit from.
   
• Tailor the group to the needs of the families: In Nottingham we have a rough plan of the 12 topics we are going to cover throughout the programme. However, once practitioners have gotten to know the families that attend, they are able to adapt the programme to suit the families. In some of our groups, rather than practitioners planning a child development topic for every week, we let the parents choose what they would like to cover the following week, by giving them opportunities to look at the topics in the Peep Learning Together folder.
   
• Having a session routine: This supports both parents and children to understand what to expect during the session, and the transition between all elements. We have found that the routine we use does vary between groups and we are happy to adjust and adapt dependent on the needs of the families.
   
• Having a waiting list and inviting a set number of families per course:  this enables practitioners to really get to know the parents and children they are delivering to. This has allowed us to incorporate additional services into the course to support parents, depending on their needs, or to signpost them on to other local services.