Networking for the Early Years Sector

We have developed 11 Early Years Communities across the county to support practitioners who deliver the Early Years Foundation Stage. They are locally run by committees that consist of a small group of leads, who are practitioners and teachers themselves.

The aim of the Early Years Communities is to support continuous quality improvement, share best practices and develop alliances to share and maximise resources. Members decide on what sort of CPD opportunities to hold and everyone is encouraged to have a “voice”.

The purpose of the Early Years Communities is to:

• raise attainment levels, supporting children to have good levels of development
• support practitioners with continual professional development
• support peer-to-peer learning
• share good practice
• represent Early Years Provider’s voice within Somerset Council

Recent examples of training provided by the Early Years Communities

• Speech and Language Development Workshops
• Neil Griffiths Training
• Basic Safeguarding in Early Years
• Wriggling to Writing
• Adult and Child Wellbeing
• Tamsin Grimmer Loving Pedagogy Training

Don’t forget you can contact your community leads to request training for your community, or even for your setting specifically.

East and West Split

We have split the communities into East and West – for the purpose of assigning a contact from the local authority only. Please see below to find the contact details for your community local authority officer.

Community Lead contacts details