C4EO theme: Early Years

Children's early years are crucial to their long term development. As the Early Years Foundation Stage states: "A child's experience in the early years has a major impact on their future life chances. A secure, safe and happy childhood is important in its own right, and it provides the foundation for children to make the most of their abilities and talents as they grow up.”

C4EO's work on Early Years supports Directors of Children's Services and their Children's Trust partners by providing the knowledge, data and tailored support they may need to help improve outcomes for very young children and their families.

Early Years is the first theme to be launched by the Centre. It will run from July 2008 to March 2010 and addresses the following priority areas:

• Narrowing the gap in outcomes for young children through effective practices in the early years.
• Improving children's attainment through a better quality of family-based support for early learning.
• Improving development outcomes for children through effective practice in integrating early years' services.

Early Year’s resources

C4EO is publishing and will regularly update a range of resources on Early Years. For a more detailed description of each type of resource, see Our services .

The following resources are now available on Early Years:

Narrowing the gap in outcomes for young children through effective practices in the early years.

• Progress map summary Number 1 Version 1 (153Kb PDF file) – Published January 2009.
  Print and PDF summary of key information. This will be updated as the theme progresses.
• Online progress map – Published January 2009.
  Interactive, online resource providing up-to-date information, resources and data. Local data can be compared with national and regional data. The map will be updated as the theme progresses.
• Knowledge review 1 (683Kb PDF file) – Published January 2009.
  An analysis of the existing knowledge and evidence. This will be updated as the theme progresses.
• Scoping review (590Kb PDF file) – Published November 2008.

Improving children's attainment through a better quality of family-based support for early learning.

• Progress map summary Number 2 Version 1 (111Kb PDF file) – Published January 2009.
  Print and PDF summary of key information. This will be updated as the theme progresses.
• Online progress map – Published January 2009.
  Interactive, online resource providing up-to-date information, resources and data. Local data can be compared with national and regional data. The map will be updated as the theme progresses.
• Knowledge review 2 (695Kb PDF file) – Published January 2009.
  An analysis of the existing knowledge and evidence. This will be updated as the theme progresses.
• Scoping review (461Kb PDF file) – Published November 2008.

Improving development outcomes for children through effective practice in integrating early years' services.

An interim progress map summary has been produced, based on a review of the literature, and this will be used to initiate discussion with local authorities and children's trust partners on research and practice evidence of what works in integrating services.

• Interim progress map summary (46Kb PDF file) – Published March 2009.
  This will be replaced by Progress map summary Number 3 Version 1
• Online progress map – Published April 2009.
  Interactive, online resource providing up-to-date information, resources and data. Local data can be compared with national and regional data. The map will be updated as the theme progresses.
• Knowledge review 3 (928Kb PDF file) – Published March 2009.
  An analysis of the existing knowledge and evidence. This will be updated as the theme progresses. 
• Scoping review (553Kb PDF file) – Published November 2008

Support on Early Years

Information from the resources on Early Years is being shared with Children's Trusts and Local Authorities through a series of regional knowledge workshops. In addition, C4EO sector specialists provide tailored support to Local Authorities and Children's Trusts who request it.

The type of support will be tailored to specific needs but may include: assistance with developing local improvement plans; help to use evidence-based audit tools or the development of a local progress map to assess policy, performance and practice. For further information see Tailored support.

More information

For more information about this theme contact Sue Owen or read our Priority work themes document (43kb PDF file).

You can also sign up for regular email updates.