The challenge

Cornwall is a local authority that is geographically challenged in attempts to create and sustain consistency of service across the county. Transport is road based and there are not many of them. Settings providing Early Years services were isolated from each other and lacked a shared understanding of best practice.

The Early Years Service relates to all provision for children 0 – 5, across a wide range of settings including childminders, preschool settings, and nurseries. The commissioner and her colleagues were working on a strategic plan to create and sustain a shared understanding of children’s needs and a shared language across Early Years settings and services in Cornwall.

Our approach

Introducing and embedding Five to Thrive into Early Years practice in Cornwall became a strategic priority from mid-2013. The team at KCA then worked with staff in Cornwall to co-create a programme of training to contribute to the implementation of this strategy.

KCA then delivered 40 training events in total in Cornwall, some multidisciplinary and broad in scope others aimed at specific practitioners or at particular areas of practice. Across those 40 events we secured post training feedback from 570 practitioners.

The impact

In 2024 an in-depth case study showed practitioners and leaders in settings and services that had embedded Five to Thrive saying they still use it daily in their practice, that it helps greatly with staff resilience, and that the Reflect programme they developed using Five to Thrive had enabled many very vulnerable children to be maintained in their Early Years setting and to flourish.