Raising Hope
Raising Hope
Discover University Students
More than five years into an initiative aimed at raising the aspirations of young people and families in Dublin’s Docklands, Kevin McElligott speaks with Director of the Early Learning Initiative, Josephine Bleach, to see the progress being made.
A
stroll around the Dublin Docklands area will reveal a societal division in the community. Council flats stood in the Docklands long before affluence and financial endeavour transformed the landscape. They now stand in stark contrast to the impressive corporate buildings and plush Celtic Tiger-era apartment complexes. Nonetheless, efforts to narrow the gap between social classes within the Docklands are under way and have been seeing promising results. Josephine Bleach, Director of the Early Learning Initiative (ELI), explains how the project, which is partially funded by government, but mostly through corporate investment, was born: “It was a group of business people who noticed that developing the Docklands didn’t just involve constructing buildings; you need to focus on the surrounding community and that means focusing on the people, giving them the
skills and the knowledge to make a contribution.” Officially launched in 2008, the ELI, based in the National College of Ireland, has established several projects to raise the aspirations of young people growing up in the Docklands. “Our role is to support the children and their parents from early years right up until third level, such that they get the qualifications to get jobs in the corporate firms here in the Docklands,” explains Bleach. Working in partnership with primary schools, early learning centres, community centres, secondary schools, third level institutions and local companies, the network has been described as strong, as they support one another towards a mutual goal. “What we do is, we sit down with the community, with our corporate sponsors and everybody looks at the issues that are coming up and how we can work on them together. External research would
show that we actually work really well together.” When the project was first established, the ELI team carried out research in the area and found that parents in the Docklands wanted their children to do well but didn’t know where to start. Since then, the initiative has gone on to achieve promising levels of success, revealing an increase in aspirations in the area as well as the deepening of parents’ involvement with their child’s education, indirectly promoting the idea of parents continuing their own education. uStarting
Early
One programme that has been seeing particularly good results is the Parent Child Home Programme (PCHP), a ‘learning through play experience’ designed to strengthen the bond between parent and child while promoting a love of learning. Aimed at children between one-and-a-halfyears and three-and-a-half-years, the project puts emphasis on starting the exercises as early as possible, as Bleach explains: “We start here at 18 months, not 18 years. We have trained home visitors who go out to families and model talking, reading
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FEATURE EARLY LEARNING INITIATIVE
and playing with the child for parents who observe and can continue the exercises from there.” The project has been receiving great feedback having been evaluated by the Children’s Research Centre in Trinity College. Parents themselves have noticed the benefits of the programme. “Research would say that a child coming from an advantaged area would have three or four times as many words as a child from a disadvantaged area, but now with the programme, the child is amazing its parents with what they can do and the parents notice the difference between them and their siblings. They’re developing the cognitive skills and the language skills so that they enter school with the right tools, ready for success,” says Bleach. Another programme that the ELI views as an important feature of early development revolves around building mathematical skills – the Early Numeracy Project. Running since 2011, the programme works with children from under the age of one to six years old. A joint venture between early year centres and primary schools participating in the National Early Years Access Initiative (NEYAI), the idea of the programme is to show infants that maths is all around them and to establish a mindset that gets them thinking about it. “We decide on what’s done at home and at school and in the early year centres to improve the children’s learning in that particular curriculum priority. For instance, one of our initial priorities was the concept of shape and space, so there were children walking around in the Docklands, identifying all the various shapes and spaces in their surroundings,” explains Bleach. Although official feedback on the project has yet to be released, Bleach is confident that the programme is extremely beneficial for young
minds. “It’s interesting to note that in the latest international results of TIMMS and PIRLS (who measure trends in maths and science achievement in young people) one of the areas where Ireland fell down was in shape and space but we did assessments on our infants and they came out very well on shape and space so we feel that it’s working.” uSetting
The Bar High
One of the big challenges of the initiative is supporting parents and youths in the transition from primary to secondary as the programme aims to instil these young people with direction to continue with their studies and aspire to better things, as Bleach explains: “We’re reviewing our programme in conjunction with our corporate partners such that we can establish more focus on things like career development and study skills.” These ‘stretch to learn’ strands of the programme are aimed at adolescent development from the beginning of primary school onwards and incorporate classroom lessons, group work and classroom visits from third level students and volunteers from the corporate community. Ultimately the goal is to see these young people grow up to be eligible for employment in the likes of the corporations that have set up residence close by. Bleach describes the
“Our role is to support the children and their parents from early years right up until 3rd level, such that they get the qualifications to get jobs in the corporate firms here in the docklands.”
difficulty involved in negotiating young people in a career orientated direction: “Once young people and their families are committed to third level, the next goal is looking at careers and honing the skills that they would need to get those jobs. A lot of families that we work with would never have had jobs in the corporate world and that’s why we try to get as many corporate sponsors and volunteers involved because their staff can help to create those high achieving standards in the community.” Bleach insists that “the focus is on long-term positive change rather than short-term gains” as the team build on the infrastructure of the various components that make up the Docklands and create a cohesive community where everyone is working together towards the best outcomes for the young people in the area. g
Parent Child Home Programme – Home Visitor with child.
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Discover University Students
More than five years into an initiative aimed at raising the aspirations of young people and families in Dublin’s Docklands, Kevin McElligott speaks with Director of the Early Learning Initiative, Josephine Bleach, to see the progress being made.
A
stroll around the Dublin Docklands area will reveal a societal division in the community. Council flats stood in the Docklands long before affluence and financial endeavour transformed the landscape. They now stand in stark contrast to the impressive corporate buildings and plush Celtic Tiger-era apartment complexes. Nonetheless, efforts to narrow the gap between social classes within the Docklands are under way and have been seeing promising results. Josephine Bleach, Director of the Early Learning Initiative (ELI), explains how the project, which is partially funded by government, but mostly through corporate investment, was born: “It was a group of business people who noticed that developing the Docklands didn’t just involve constructing buildings; you need to focus on the surrounding community and that means focusing on the people, giving them the
skills and the knowledge to make a contribution.” Officially launched in 2008, the ELI, based in the National College of Ireland, has established several projects to raise the aspirations of young people growing up in the Docklands. “Our role is to support the children and their parents from early years right up until third level, such that they get the qualifications to get jobs in the corporate firms here in the Docklands,” explains Bleach. Working in partnership with primary schools, early learning centres, community centres, secondary schools, third level institutions and local companies, the network has been described as strong, as they support one another towards a mutual goal. “What we do is, we sit down with the community, with our corporate sponsors and everybody looks at the issues that are coming up and how we can work on them together. External research would
show that we actually work really well together.” When the project was first established, the ELI team carried out research in the area and found that parents in the Docklands wanted their children to do well but didn’t know where to start. Since then, the initiative has gone on to achieve promising levels of success, revealing an increase in aspirations in the area as well as the deepening of parents’ involvement with their child’s education, indirectly promoting the idea of parents continuing their own education. uStarting
Early
One programme that has been seeing particularly good results is the Parent Child Home Programme (PCHP), a ‘learning through play experience’ designed to strengthen the bond between parent and child while promoting a love of learning. Aimed at children between one-and-a-halfyears and three-and-a-half-years, the project puts emphasis on starting the exercises as early as possible, as Bleach explains: “We start here at 18 months, not 18 years. We have trained home visitors who go out to families and model talking, reading
36
BI Summer 2013 1_53.indd 36
25/06/2013 16:02:56
FEATURE EARLY LEARNING INITIATIVE
and playing with the child for parents who observe and can continue the exercises from there.” The project has been receiving great feedback having been evaluated by the Children’s Research Centre in Trinity College. Parents themselves have noticed the benefits of the programme. “Research would say that a child coming from an advantaged area would have three or four times as many words as a child from a disadvantaged area, but now with the programme, the child is amazing its parents with what they can do and the parents notice the difference between them and their siblings. They’re developing the cognitive skills and the language skills so that they enter school with the right tools, ready for success,” says Bleach. Another programme that the ELI views as an important feature of early development revolves around building mathematical skills – the Early Numeracy Project. Running since 2011, the programme works with children from under the age of one to six years old. A joint venture between early year centres and primary schools participating in the National Early Years Access Initiative (NEYAI), the idea of the programme is to show infants that maths is all around them and to establish a mindset that gets them thinking about it. “We decide on what’s done at home and at school and in the early year centres to improve the children’s learning in that particular curriculum priority. For instance, one of our initial priorities was the concept of shape and space, so there were children walking around in the Docklands, identifying all the various shapes and spaces in their surroundings,” explains Bleach. Although official feedback on the project has yet to be released, Bleach is confident that the programme is extremely beneficial for young
minds. “It’s interesting to note that in the latest international results of TIMMS and PIRLS (who measure trends in maths and science achievement in young people) one of the areas where Ireland fell down was in shape and space but we did assessments on our infants and they came out very well on shape and space so we feel that it’s working.” uSetting
The Bar High
One of the big challenges of the initiative is supporting parents and youths in the transition from primary to secondary as the programme aims to instil these young people with direction to continue with their studies and aspire to better things, as Bleach explains: “We’re reviewing our programme in conjunction with our corporate partners such that we can establish more focus on things like career development and study skills.” These ‘stretch to learn’ strands of the programme are aimed at adolescent development from the beginning of primary school onwards and incorporate classroom lessons, group work and classroom visits from third level students and volunteers from the corporate community. Ultimately the goal is to see these young people grow up to be eligible for employment in the likes of the corporations that have set up residence close by. Bleach describes the
“Our role is to support the children and their parents from early years right up until 3rd level, such that they get the qualifications to get jobs in the corporate firms here in the docklands.”
difficulty involved in negotiating young people in a career orientated direction: “Once young people and their families are committed to third level, the next goal is looking at careers and honing the skills that they would need to get those jobs. A lot of families that we work with would never have had jobs in the corporate world and that’s why we try to get as many corporate sponsors and volunteers involved because their staff can help to create those high achieving standards in the community.” Bleach insists that “the focus is on long-term positive change rather than short-term gains” as the team build on the infrastructure of the various components that make up the Docklands and create a cohesive community where everyone is working together towards the best outcomes for the young people in the area. g
Parent Child Home Programme – Home Visitor with child.
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25/06/2013 16:03:14
