Continuing Professional Development in Early Years: A Report

This report delves into the realm of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for Early Years Practitioners, examining the multifaceted roles and responsibilities of nursery assistants, the requirements of codes of practice and standards, and the influence of current frameworks and policies such as the EYFS, Equality Act 2010, and Health and Safety Act 1974. It emphasizes the significance of reflective practices in enhancing professional skills and knowledge, alongside the importance of CPD in maintaining competence and ensuring quality service delivery. The report underscores how CPD, encompassing formal training and experiential learning, contributes to the continuous improvement of skills, knowledge, and overall professional development, particularly within the context of early childhood education. It highlights how standards and policies, such as the SEND code of practice, and the Equality Act 2010, play a crucial role in shaping the work of nursery assistants and ensuring the well-being of children.

CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL
DEVELOPMENT FOR EARLY YEARS
PRACTITIONERS

TABLE OF CONTENTS
1.1 Explaining roles and responsibilities....................................................................................1
1.2 Requirements of codes of practice and standards.................................................................1
1.3 Analysing current frameworks and policies .........................................................................1
2.2 Analysing the process of reflection.......................................................................................2
2.1 Importance of reflective practices.........................................................................................2
3.1 Importance of continued professional development.............................................................2
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................3

1.1 Explaining roles and responsibilities
As a nursery assistant, there are various factors that need to be considered while dealing
with people and some responsibilities of the same are discussed below:
Maintaining hygiene
Balancing an appropriate rate of cleanliness is important as a nursery assistant (Eng and
Pai, 2015). Whether it is about personal hygiene or keeping the environment clean, this helps in
protecting individuals from any further complications or issue such as infections etc.
Organising activities
As a nursery assistant, organising different sessions and activities is considered as a very
important factor because it helps the children in achieving all their personal needs and
requirements. Also, different types of activities can help them in making more efficient and
active.
1.2 Requirements of codes of practice and standards
There is a huge requirement of standards and codes of practice because this helps in
maintaining a balance between different operations and functions. A very basic example can be
considered as of Ofsted Office for standards in education, services and skills. The role of Ofsted
is that it involves various services that can help to make people aware of education and other
essential skills. The code of conduct sets standards of conduct of health care to support
employees and social care workers. It outlines attitudes and behaviour which is expected from
workers up to the code and provides care, safety and support. For an example, SEND code of
practice in which all schools must have regard to special education need and disability. This
applies equally towards free schools and academies etc.
Another common example that can be taken here is of early year's foundation stage (Lim,
Brown and Kim, 2014). It involves series of areas that can help in proper development of
individual such as interaction with people, improving literacy rate etc. Along with this, it also
involves various ways that can help in the development of an individual personally, either
physically or mentally.
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1.3 Analysing current frameworks and policies
Different frameworks have an impact on the processing of operations that are discussed
below:
The EYFS stands for early years' foundation stage has or had no children social, personal,
emotional development, communication, language and literacy skills. In addition to this, in day
to day role there are some policies within nursery setting such as language, positive behaviour
and approach, child protection, health and safety and prevention of infection. Nursing assistants
are able to follow them as guidelines through which proper care and support is given to children.
There is positive impact on role as nursery assistant as it enables to boost up moral and
performance level. Developing strong relationship with child is one of the important roles and
EYFS provides guidelines that are needed to be followed so that effective care can be provided.
Equality Act 2010
The Equality Act 2010 considers the fact that there must be no sort of discrimination or
racism (Strudwick and Day, 2014). Whether it is on basis of colour, race, gender, etc. it is not
permitted at all. It is because this can actually have a very negative influence on the person and
their mental stability. Therefore, it is important to ensure that no sort of racism should happen
with any individual. In addition, as per the Act, anyone who found guilty in such actions may
have to pay huge amount of penalties and punishment that can also lead to the imprisonment of
an individual.
Health and Safety Act 1974
The Health and Safety Act 1974 refers to the fact that when an employee is working in an
organisation and during that time, if a person faces some accident or emergency, it is the
responsibility of the firm to provide them proper care and support. Failing to do so can result in
huge penalties of an organisation.
2.2 Analysing the process of reflection
Reflection means expressing one's own ideas about some specific idea or theory. This is
considered as a sort of ability of a person that helps them to gain a wider and better analysis of
some experiences. Reflection helps in increasing the knowledge and making it wider because
after making the analysis, it means writing in the form of own ideas. So, this helps in making the
thinking of an individual wider.
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2.1 Importance of reflective practices
Reflective practices help in improving various areas of an individual. As in reflective
practices, one has to note down the entire experience and thus sometimes, different problems
arise. Therefore, at that time of analysing these problems, it helps in improving skills. In
addition, it can be achieved by regular practice of an individual (Skovholt and Trotter-Mathison,
2014). Thus, it can also be ensured that there is an essential role of reflective practices in
improving the practice rate of a person. Therefore, while analysing the complications and
improving them, the subject knowledge starts improving to a huge extent. Performing the same
on different subjected topics can help an individual to achieve better rate of understanding and
knowledge in different areas.
3.1 Importance of continued professional development
Continued professional development is important that it values whole spectrum of
learning experience which includes, formal training, job development and qualification with
experiential and informal learnings. It is important in early years that it helps to ensure that the
role is continued to be competent in profession.
The codes of practices influence CPD that it is required by professional to follow them in
order to keep their skills and knowledge to deliver quality services to meet customer
requirements. EYFS also influence CPS that it is important to identify self-regulation and
resilience for child development and it can be improve by CPD.
Professional development on a continuous basis helps in maintaining balance between
different factors of life. Involving some ways for achieving an improvement acts efficient but
working on the same helps in its maintenance. Whether, it is in terms of communication or any
other part of life, practising it on a regular basis can help in keeping it appropriate. Therefore, for
achieving this, one can ensure involving different ways so that it can further help in an efficient
professional development of the person. Through training, individuals are able to enhance their
skills and capabilities. However, it is important that proper monitoring of the performance is
done in order to determine the areas in which improvement is needed to be made. For example,
as a nursery assistant, there are certain skills required to perform certain task given and with the
help of training, it enables to get continuous professional development.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Eng, C.J. and Pai, H.C., 2015. Determinants of nursing competence of nursing students in
Taiwan: the role of self-reflection and insight. Nurse education today, 35(3), pp.450-455.
Lim, F.A., Brown Jr, D.V. and Kim, S.M.J., 2014. CE: Addressing health care disparities in the
lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender population: A review of best practices. AJN The
American Journal of Nursing. 114(6). pp.24-34.
Skovholt, T.M. and Trotter-Mathison, M., 2014. The resilient practitioner: Burnout prevention
and self-care strategies for counselors, therapists, teachers, and health professionals.
Routledge.
Strudwick, R.M. and Day, J., 2014. Interprofessional working in diagnostic
radiography. Radiography. 20(3). pp.235-240.
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