Every Child matters green paper was presented to parliament in September 2003. It was published alongside Keeping Children Safe, a detailed response to the practice recommendations made from an inquiry into the death of Victoria Climbié. The paper outlined the five outcomes that mattered most to children and young people,
* Being Healthy
* Staying Safe
* Enjoying and Achieving
* Making a Positive Contribution
* Achieving Economic Well Being
and was built on four main areas,
* Supporting parents and carers
* Early intervention and effective protection
* Accountability and integration – locally, regionally and nationally
* Workforce reform.
A number of commitments from the Every Child Matters green paper have been taken forward through the Children Act 2004. The act provided the legislative spine on which the reform of children’s services is based. The success of local implementation is assessed by the Every Child Matters Outcomes.
The Children Act 2006 states that you must apply for early year’s (under 5’s) registration and receive a certificate prescribing this, in order to be able to provide early year’s home based childcare (childminding) and for Later years childcare (under 8’s) you have to be registered in Part A of the General Childcare Register.
As an early years provider you have a duty to implement the Learning and Development requirements along with the Welfare requirements. These requirements combined are known as the “Early Years Foundation Stage”. (Childcare Act 2006 (c.21) section 39 subsection 2)
Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS):
There are six areas of Learning and Development requirements that must be covered:
* Personal, Social and Emotional Development
* Communication, Language and Literacy
* Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy
* Knowledge and Understanding of the World
* Physical Development