Baby Quality Toolkit Taster Pages

Foreword
The Baby Quality Toolkit has been designed by Bath & North East Somerset Early Years Service,
to support settings with providing high quality early childhood care and education for our
youngest and most vulnerable children – the under twos. The Toolkit has been developed in
consultation with early years practitioners from a variety of settings across Bath and North East
Somerset. It has been tried and tested and builds on both an acknowledged evidence base and
many years of working closely with baby room practitioners.
This Baby Quality Toolkit fits securely within the Children’s Service vision in Bath and North East
Somerset in that:
We want all children and young people to enjoy childhood and to be well prepared for adult life.
This toolkit will support you to develop the very best high quality provision for every child in
your care.
‘We now know that (very young children)
are far more competent and capable than
we ever realised. No longer do we regard
young babies as helpless, but as
individuals who are born learner.’
Dowling, M. 2014
Children under three years:
the time of their lives
Ashley Ayre – Strategic Director for People and Communities
This valuable Baby Quality Toolkit builds on the success of the Toddler Quality Toolkit and offers
another excellent framework for early years practitioners to support their work with the youngest
children. This essential toolkit takes you on an evaluative journey that will help identify both the
strengths of your practice as well as the various ways in which you can enhance its quality. It
offers a skilful set of reflective audit tools, resources and activities that will enable settings to
explore and improve upon the experiences of babies and their families in order to develop the
best possible provision. We now know that creating an optimal environment in the first critical
years of life can have a long term impact on health, wellbeing and our capacity to learn. All key
aspects of providing a supportive and nourishing relationship and a stimulating environment for
babies are addressed in this toolkit. It will help you to ensure you offer both a safe haven for
babies and a secure base from which to explore and learn about their world.
Dr Janet Rose – Principal, Norland College
2 Baby Quality – A toolkit to support tuning into babies © Bath & North East Somerset Council