Leadership in Integrated Centres

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Leadership in Integrated Centres Services for
Children Families A Community Development
Approach Engaging with the struggle

• Dr Margy Whalley
• Pen Green Centre for Children and their Families,
  Corby
• LTS Leadership in the Early Years
• Glasgow, Scotland November 2006

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Childrens centres
The hope of progressive politics

• Progressives are searching for a means through
  which individuals can transform themselves
  through a process of internal discovery self
  actualization, and by participating in the
  reshaping of the shared contexts in which they
  live out their individual lives

Tom Bentley Catherine Fieschi Demos 2006
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Working in Childrens centres
The Issues the challenges

• Working towards equality of opportunity and
  social justice
• Developing social capital
• Developing cultural capital
• Developing leadership learning and growing
  learning communities

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Communities of Oppression Learning to be Strong
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Integrated Centres Services

• In every small community there should be a
  service for children and their families. This
  service should honour the needs of young children
  and celebrate their existence. It should also
  support families, however, they are constituted
  within the community

Pen Green 1983
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Childrens Centres Centres for children their
families rooted in places close to us

• Early Years Education
• Extended hours, extended year provision to
  support children and families
• Inclusive, flexible, education with care for
  children in need and children with special
  educational needs
• Adult community education
• Family support services
• A Focus for voluntary work and community
  regeneration
• Training and Support for early years services and
  Primary practitioners
• Practitioner Research and Professional
  Development

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Challenge our Construct of the Child and the
family
Children At The Centre The power relations
between adults and children are all wrong.they
must be changed so adults would no longer be
convinced of their right.to arrange the life and
world of the child as they think best, without
considering the childs feelings about
it. (Korczak)
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Challenge Our Professional Practice A
rebalancing of power relationships between
citizens professionals
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Challenge our conceptualisation of Leadership

• The complex demands of running a Childrens
  Centre means that the head has the task of
  coalescing different styles of early education,
  child care, family support and adult community
  learning into one institution and this requires a
  distinctive and specialist model of leadership
  development.
• (Whalley, Whitaker Briefing Paper for Minister
  Margaret Hodge, 1999)

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Challenge our models of governance

• Porous
• Accessible
• Engaging
• Personalized
• Adaptive
• Enabling

• Monolithic
• Hermetic
• Alienating
• Standardised
• Pre-programmed
• Persecutory

With thanks to Demos
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Four Critical Factors

• A shared philosophy (shared vision and values and
  a principled approach to practice)
• A multi-disciplinary team with all or most
  disciplines represented (strong connections with
  other agencies)
• Shared leadership and management and consistent
  ways of working (Leaderfulness)
• Proximity, the co-existence of all services
  (hopefully) on one campus.

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A Community Development Approach

• Childrens centres are concerned with children,
• staff, parents and the wider community
• Developing the individuals capacity to be self
  directing
• Helping individuals to gain more control over
  their lives
• Raising self-esteem
• Promoting learning as a lifelong experience
• Working towards equal opportunities
• Pushing boundaries
• Encouraging constructive discontent
• not having to put up with things the way
  they are
• Encouraging people to feel they have the power to
  
• change things
• Developing Self-fulfilment

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• New versions of professional knowledge
• Results Based Accountability
• (Curve Turning)
• Turning the Curve in your setting
• Establish what in your domain are the challenges,
  critical issues, things to celebrate currently?
• What do you and your team including children,
  families, other agencies and the wider community
  want to turn the curve on in your domain?
• What would be the small steps to achieve this
  objective
• How will you know youve achieved it?

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Encouraging

• Advocacy - parents and early years educators
  speaking up on behalf of, interceding on behalf
  of children and themselves
• Developing
• Agency - children, parents, staff believe they
  can change situations and determine the outcomes
  of an activity. Agency reflects self esteem and
  self confidence. A child high in agency will
  readily become involved in challenging problems
  and will be appropriately assertive in actions
  with peers

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Childrens Centres turning the Curve
Developing Aspirational Children, Parents and
Workers

• 1 Action for children
• 2 Action for parents
• 3 Action for workers

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Action for Children Leading the Learning

• A rich curriculum
• A constructivist pedagogy
• Feisty children Children with a sense of
  chuffedness

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2 Action for Parents
Parental Involvement in Childrens Learning We
know that young children achieve more and are
happier when Early years educators work together
with parents and share ideas about how to support
and extend childrens learning (Athey,
1990 Meade 1995)
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Sharing Knowledge Staff as cultural
brokers/mediators

• The roles of professional experience and
  parents everyday experience are seen as
  complementary but equally important. The former
  constitutes a public (and generalised) form of
  theory about child development, whilst the
  latter represents a personal theory about the
  development of a particular child. An interaction
  between the two theories or ways of explaining a
  childs actions may produce an enriched
  understanding as a basis for both to act in
  relation to the child. Only through the
  combination of both types of information could a
  broad and accurate picture be built up of a
  childs developmental progress.
• (Easen et al, 1992)

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Developing new versions of professional
knowledge Lessons from indigenous peoples

• Take what people offer and build on it
• Pride matters Never humiliate Never blame
• Find reciprocal ways of working
• Look to your elders for help
• Claim the right not to be minoritized
• Insist on complexity
• Be creators of your own living culture
• If youre seen as trouble take it as a
  compliment
• Seize the day and leave no-one behind

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Action for Workers Developing A
Multi-Disciplinary workforce

• Developing reflective Practitioners
• Developing practitioner Research
• Developing Leadership
• learning
• Developing a Networked
• learning community

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Childrens centres as Research Centres Evidence
Based Practice I have perhaps been slow in coming
to realize that the facts are always friendly.
Every bit of evidence one can acquire, in any
area, leads one that much closer to what is true.
And being closer to the truth can never be a
harmful or dangerous thing. So while I still hate
to readjust my thinking, still hate to give up
old ways of perceiving and conceptualizing, yet
at some deeper level I have, to a considerable
degree, come to realize that these painful
reorganizations are what is known as learning,
and that though painful they always lead to a
more satisfying because somewhat more accurate
way of seeing life.
From On Becoming a Person p25 Carl Rogers (1961).
Houghton Mifflin
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Effective Leaders in Childrens Centres are...

• Committed to the belief that all children, and
  their parents, have the right to access high
  quality early years services
• Skilful social entrepreneurs working within a
  strong value base
• Well informed rigorous thinkers committed to
  their own learning and the learning of the people
  they lead
• Aware and articulate human developers concerned
  with the people in the organisation in which they
  work and able to recognise and support the
  emotional lives of their organisations
• Able to engage in rigorous debate and reflexive
  practice
• Concerned with improving outcomes for children
  and their families
• (Whalley, 1999)
• (Whalley, 1999)

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Leaderful Teams
Everyone is born to lead in the same way
everyone is born to learn. The Childrens
centre leader may be seen as a person in whom
the dream of making a difference has been kept
alive.. Linda Lambert 2003
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Childrens Centres A Pedagogy of participation
Feisty Children feisty Adults
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Pedagogical Isomorphism Containment, Challenge,
time for reflection, time for dialogue
From the minute you enter the door you feel
you are important
We began to challenge and be challenged