5 recommended sources of personal and professional development

22nd March 2018

By Kathy Brodie

One of the biggest problems in the Early Years sector is keeping up to date with new practices, ensuring good practices are embedded and complying with the latest legislation. It is vital that we keep our own personal and professional development up to date so that we can support children’s wellbeing, learning and development.

However, this can be easier said than done. Face to face conferences, such as the Childcare Expo, offer excellent opportunities to update practice, meet others to share good practice with and also see all the latest resources available.

In between times, there are lots of great websites to refer to for the latest information on a range of subjects. Here are my favourite, top 5 CPPD websites:

1. CASPAR from the NSPCC. If you subscribe to this service, you will receive a huge range of information about safeguarding and child protection, from legislation changes to news stories about the Early Years sector. I find this is a good place to start if you want to investigate anything new as well as giving an overview of things happening in social care, parenting or child and family services. https://casparnews.tumblr.com/
2. The Foundation Years website. Again, you can subscribe to get updates from this site, with a firm focus on Early Years. There is a huge range of information on the site itself, from good dental health for children to the latest grants available. This site also has a huge array of very useful external links, to things like the National Strategies documents. foundationyears.org.uk
3. The Outdoor Hub on the Muddy Faces site. The Outdoor Hub is a simple but brilliant idea. Practitioners can submit their own activity ideas, tagged with the suitable age range, duration, location and season. These are then collected into easily navigated sections on the website, from arts and creating to tool use. This means that you can find an activity for any occasion, quickly and easily. No more excuses for doing the same thing again and again! https://www.muddyfaces.co.uk/outdoor-hub/
4. The European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA) ‘promotes and disseminates multi-disciplinary research’ on all aspect of early childhood. It is truly international and has an amazing international conference every year, where cutting edge research is presented and discussed. If you would like to keep up to date with the latest research from EECERA, you can see videos of the keynotes, authors discussing their books and many other interesting presentations on YouTube (youtube.com) – just search for EECERA. Another top video site to see and hear researchers present their works is TED Talks (www.ted.com/talks). Simply search for the area that you are interested in, for example neuroscience or outdoor play.
5. Finally, it would be very remiss not to mention CPPD about the pre-birth to three-age group. Education Scotland have an amazing page on their website, with video and transcripts from top researchers, practitioners and experts all about the learning and development that happens pre-birth to three. The breadth of information is astonishing, from attunement to Dr Suzanne Zeedyk talking about attachment. https://education.gov.scot/improvement/learning-resources/Pre-Birth%20to%20Three or go to: education.gov.scot and search ‘pre-birth to three’. You can also sign up for their newsletter.

www.kathybrodie.com

Kathy Brodie’s latest book ‘The Holistic Care and Development of Children from Birth to Three’ has just been published by David Fulton Publishers.

Kathy’s current free, online Spring Summit 2018 has a focus on Outdoor Play and Learning. Find out about all the Summits here: www.earlyyearssummit.com or on Twitter using #EarlyYearsSummit