Cornwall Five To Thrive
A write-up of our collaboration with Cornwall local authority, Aug 2024
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The challenge
Cornwall is a local authority that is geographically challenged in attempts to create and sustain consistency of service across the county. Transport is road based and there are not many of them. Settings providing Early Years services were isolated from each other and lacked a shared understanding of best practice.
The Early Years Service relates to all provision for children 0 – 5, across a wide range of settings including childminders, preschool settings, and nurseries. The commissioner and her colleagues were working on a strategic plan to create and sustain a shared understanding of children’s needs and a shared language across Early Years settings and services in Cornwall.
Our approach
Introducing and embedding Five to Thrive into Early Years practice in Cornwall became a strategic priority from mid-2013. The team at KCA then worked with staff in Cornwall to co-create a programme of training to contribute to the implementation of this strategy.
KCA then delivered 40 training events in total in Cornwall, some multidisciplinary and broad in scope others aimed at specific practitioners or at particular areas of practice. Across those 40 events we secured post training feedback from 570 practitioners.
The impact
In 2024 an in-depth case study showed practitioners and leaders in settings and services that had embedded Five to Thrive saying they still use it daily in their practice, that it helps greatly with staff resilience, and that the Reflect programme they developed using Five to Thrive had enabled many very vulnerable children to be maintained in their Early Years setting and to flourish.
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View/download case studyMedway Council and Kent and Medway Violence Reduction Unit
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View/download case studySwindon Early Years Project
KCA has a long-standing partnership with Swindon Borough Council, working on several projects for the children’s services workforce. Starting in 2013 to implement the Five to Thrive approach. Further training in 2014 for Early Years Practitioners, Health Visitors, and Children’s Centre. In 2015, the programme extended to those working with older children. In July 2019, KCA’s role evolved with the Swindon Early Outcomes Project, which result in online training as a result of the Covid 19 pandemic.
View/download case studySee all our case studies…