Tma03

In part 1, I will summarise the chapter by Draper and Duffy (2006) “Working with parents”, which is chapter 25 of Reader 1.

The Thomas Coram Children’s Centre in London is run by Lucy Draper and Bernadette Duffy. They look at and explore the partnership with parents, biological or non-biological and practitioners. The centre consists of an early childhood centre offering 106 places for children aged 6 months to 5 years, working with parents around children’s learning, support for parents, providing them with support and training for parents of the nursery children, as well as the wider community offering further access to training and parental involvement in management by joining the sub committees, the parents forum and parent governors. So we ask the question, why is partnership important, when working with parents? It has been written into the law via The Children’s act 1989, introduced the concept of parental responsibility. At the beginning of the 20th century, lectures for parents and parents groups in the nursery schools, Margaret Macmillan established. In the 1960’s the parent involvement programmes focused on the parents whose children’s achievements seemed low and parental involvement was seen as a way of compensating for the limitations of home. The Sure Start programme was launched in 1998 which integrated into the rapidly expanding national programme of children’s centre, which recognises the centrality of parental involvement from the start.

There are some benefits for working in partnership with parents. The benefits have been researched by Desforges and Abouchaar in 2003, the DFES confirmed the view that both parent involvement in the early years setting and the educational environment of the home have a positive effect on children’s achievement adjustment, even after other factors such as social class have been taken into account (Draper and Duffy, 2010). The most important benefits for parents are too have a good relationship with staff in...