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. Workshop topics include:

• Where do we go from here?
• Encouraging positive behaviour
• Money matters
• Communicating with professionals
• Understanding sleep
• Maintaining healthy relationships  

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

See our family workshops page to see what we’re running at the moment.

About our programme funders

Brighter Beginnings was created through the generous investment of an individual donor.

We can continue to offer this programme of support free to parent carers due to donations from a range of charitable funders and with the Department of Education, as part of the SEND partnership. 

More about the Early Years SEND Partnership

These workshops are part 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 and the Communication Trust.

The Early Years SEND Partnership will provide support on SEND to early years settings and local authorities in the North West, the East Midlands, the North East, Yorkshire and Humber and the West Midlands.

As well as the Brighter Beginnings workshops, in 2019 Contact will be offering the following.

Train the trainer parent programme

We will co-produce, design and run a training offer which enables parent carers to increase their confidence and skills in order to deliver the parent programme.

By training parents to deliver the parent programme, Brighter Beginnings will support its own ongoing sustainability.

Training to practitioners

As part of the core project to early years practitioners, Contact will co-deliver with parents of disabled children a one-off training session, which aims to ensure the workforce empowers parents to enable them to get the best from their child’s early year’s entitlement.

The session will cover:

• How to engage and work with parents.
• How to empower parents to enable them to get the best from their child’s Early years entitlement.
• Improved practitioner confidence and knowledge on how to communicate and working with parents so developing a relationship with parents based on mutual trust and respect.

If you have any questions about the project, please email helen.davies@contact.org.uk