Brighter Beginnings

Brighter Beginnings is for parents at the beginning of their journey.

Through a series of workshops, we support families to tackle some of the unique challenges they might face in the early years.

These workshops are:

• Understanding your child’s behaviour.
• Money Matters.
• Early years entitlements.
• Early years education.
• Managing your child’s sleep.
• Toilet training.
• Introduction to speech and language challenges.
• Supporting your child with social communication challenges.
• Wellbeing for parents.

Brighter Beginnings courses take place across England, and they’re free for all parent carers.

See our Brighter Beginnings Eventbrite page to see what we’re running at the moment.

The Early Years SEND Partnership

Brighter Beginnings workshops are part our support offer as a member of the Early Years SEND partnership (special educational needs and disabilities) and are funded by the Department for Education.

Contact is part of the Early Years SEND Partnership with the Council for Disabled Children, nasen, I CAN, The Communication Trust, Contact and Dingley’s Promise. The Early Years SEND Partnership offers strategic support to select local family hub areas to improve access and inclusion for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

As well as the Brighter Beginnings workshops, our role in the Early Years SEND Partnership includes the following.

Providing SEND support

Contact provides support on SEND to a number of family hub areas, early years settings and parent carer forums in England.

This strategic support aims to:

• Address challenges faced by under-represented and under-served communities within family hub areas.
• Support co-production using the Four Cornerstones model.
• Help settings to become welcoming and inclusive.

Training for practitioners

As part of our core support to early years practitioners, we offer a training session on empowering parents to get the best from their child’s early years entitlements.

The workshop, Working together with parent carers of children with additional needs and disabilities, covers:

• How to engage and work with parents.
• Empowering parents to get the best from their child’s early years’ entitlement.
• Improved practitioner confidence and knowledge on how to communicate and work with parents, developing a relationship based on mutual trust and respect.

If you have any questions about Brighter Beginnings or the Early Years SEND Partnership, please email [email protected]