Written by Dani Crispin Crook, Development Manager - Early Years, RISE
Many Active Partnerships are working collaboratively and innovatively to increase physical activity levels in young children aged 0-5 in order to support our youngest children to build the foundations for a healthy, happy life through physical activity.
Did you know that only 9 % of children aged 2 – 4 meet the Chief Medical Officer’s physical activity recommendations of 180 minutes per day?1 Or that by the time they reach Reception (age 5), 14.4% of children are obese?2 (This actually raises to 20.3% in the most deprived areas).
Those stats aren’t exactly great news, but we know that increased physical activity can support these outcomes. In the Early Years a child’s brain and body develops and grows more than at any other point in life. Just think how much a child changes from birth to the age of 5. They learn to shuffle then crawl, walk, run, write. They learn to talk, listen, understand, share, play. And movement acts as the foundation to this.
The benefits of physical activity in the Early Years are more than maintaining a healthy weight or even increasing wellbeing. When young children are physically active, they are building strengths, skills and habits that can last them a lifetime. From building muscle and bone strength that compounds as they grow, to developing fundamental gross and fine motor skills, to supporting cognitive and brain development and practicing social and communication skills.
When we take into account the correlation between deprivation and higher numbers of children entering schools without fundamental skills to learn (movement and otherwise) and consider that statistically these same children are more likely to experience physical and mental health difficulties later in life, we can clearly see how physical activity in the Early Years is a golden bullet in tackling all kinds of educational, developmental and social inequalities.
So, what are Active Partnerships doing?
In short, quite a lot! When I started my role as Early Years Development Manager at Rise back in May 2021, because Active Partnerships don’t receive direct, core funding for 0 – 5 year olds, I was one of the only members of staff (possibly the only one actually!) across the Active Partnership network dedicated to Early Years and didn’t quite know where to start!
I teamed up with Stu Kennard from SASP to start the Early Years Community of Learning for Active Partnerships (EY CoL). The group meets termly and shares ideas, projects, challenges and successes and it turns out there’s a lot of incredible work going on, despite the funding limitations. There’s an assortment of families projects, schemes and training for Early Years staff, and parent resources. Active Partnerships have been innovative in including the Early Years in existing projects, tweaking them if necessary, such as Play Streets, cycling projects, The Daily Mile and even Together Funding. Different Active Partnerships have different approaches, funding methods and levels of in-house delivery and outsourcing and it has been a great place to learn from each other and collaborate. Members range from those who have quite a lot of time and resource directed towards Early Years to those who do nothing yet but have identified a need and are learning how they might act on it. It has also led to a separate Maternity group being born out of it too.
Workforce development is a priority for many Active Partnerships working within Early Years. It’s obvious really, a child in full time childcare may spend more of their waking time at nursery than at home with their parents. Babies born in the first Covid lockdown are now entering 2-Year-old nursery provision, and with government funded places for 2 and 3 year olds encouraging uptake, many children access Early Years settings.
Many Local Authorities and NHS colleagues are concerned that the pandemic has exacerbated unhealthy lifestyles, obesity levels and are noticing lower levels of ‘school readiness’ (children entering school with the skills to learn). Staff training works as a model to disseminate a love of activity and improved movement skills to children. Several Active Partnerships have provided training for setting based Early Years staff and some are branching into upskilling the wider workforce such as health visitors.
Rise created a survey to determine what physical activity looks like in Early Years Settings, what barriers there are and what support would be beneficial. With the support of the EY CoL group, 14 Active Partnerships promoted the survey widely resulting in over 1500 responses from Early Years practitioners, teachers, managers and childminders from across England. Alongside the national data, individual Active Partnerships gained access to responses from their local area to help inform future work. National findings showed that:
- 34% of respondents said their initial training fully equipped them with the knowledge and skills they need to support children to be physically active.
- Yet only half have done CPD around physical activity
- Key barriers to physical activity in Early Years settings are: funding and resourcing, staffing, staff knowledge and training, and parental attitudes and understanding of physical activity.
Led by Rise, the Active Partnerships involved are collaborating to come up with a set of recommendations around activity in Early Years settings and to raise the profile of the Early Years in the sport and physical activity sector. They are also sharing learning and collaborating on finding solutions to some of the challenges raised.
Early Years is an exciting and expanding area for Active Partnerships with more and more investing in it through allocating staff time and funding projects. Indeed, funding is always a hot topic at the EY CoL meetings whilst some Active Partnerships have used reserves, corporate funding, charitable bids or local authority funding for their Early Years work, there are now some Active Partnerships working together to go in for national funding options that wouldn’t be available to individual local organisations. We are working collaboratively to raise the profile of Early Years within Active Partnerships themselves, Sport England and our partners.
Partnership and system leadership work will continue to be at the heart of our work, linking together local services and bodies to benefit the youngest children in our communities. We will continue to share our practise and insight among the Active Partnership network to support each other to champion the Early Years both locally and nationally.
If you are interested in finding out more about the Early Years Workforce survey or are an Active Partnership interested in joining with the Early Years Community of Learning or Maternity Network, please contact me at Dani.Crispin@wearerise.co.uk
 The Best Start in Life, A Manifesto for Physical Activity in the Early Years, BHFNC, 2016
 National Child Measurement Programme, England 2020/21