August 2023 Parenta magazine

Practitioner well-being
Early years practitioners and educators are
the bodies and minds on the floor of our
early years settings; supporting children’s
learning and development, giving cuddles,
wiping tears, running rooms, supporting
other members of the team, meeting
managerial demands, being responsive
to the needs of not only the children,
but their parents and families too – all
whilst juggling their own life baggage
simultaneously.
Yet the mental health and well-being of
our staff teams are incredibly poor but
often overlooked/ignored. Staff can be
made to feel guilty for being ill, ‘letting the
team down’ if they take some time off and
not being 100% each and every day.
Early years is an incredibly demanding
sector, both physically and mentally;
is it any surprise that mental illness
is commonplace across the sector?
Essentially, a happy workforce is a
healthy workforce and practitioners are
considerably more likely to fully immerse
themselves in their roles, strive for
professional development and provide a
better quality of care when they are feeling
supported, respected, and valued within
the workplace, regardless of their mental
health.
Our practitioners put on a ‘brave face’
a lot of the time so as not to impact the
children’s experiences and learning and
development, but from a managerial/
leadership point of view, we do not want
to be encouraging this to be the norm.
How mental health in the early years is
‘treated’ is important, as we all know that
‘faking a smile’ or ‘putting on a brave face’
does not solve the problems and allow the
person to process or sometimes even feel
their emotions - which only causes deeper
rooted issues in the long term.
It is imperative that managers and leaders
are aware of and understand just how
fraught and stressed their workforce is
in order to provide adequate support;
not just a hamper of ‘goodies’ in the
staff room, but proper support whereby
the practitioner feels listened to and
understood.
As a sector we pride ourselves on how
communicative we are, yet when it comes
to our mental health, we’d much rather
sweep it under the carpet, pretend and
bury ourselves in the day-to-day – but
in order for us to be role models for
our children and support and promote
children’s emotional well-being and selfregulation,
we must be able to do this
ourselves first.
As the people who work so closely with
the youngest members of our sector,
we must be emotionally and mentally
available to these children - they need
us to be ready to support and listen to
them, and ultimately, if we’re not OK, then
the children won’t be OK. Children are
incredibly intuitive and even our youngest
children can pick up on emotional energy,
so if practitioners’ emotional needs are not
being met and supported, then this will
have an impact on the emotional wellbeing
of the children they care for.
Early years needs to lose the ‘blame
culture’ and the stigma around mental
illness; you can have a mental illness and
still be fit to look after children; a mental
illness or mental health struggles do not
shape a person or practitioner, nor do
they impact on how capable a person is at
doing their job.
All we want for the children we care for
is for them to grow and develop into
happy, healthy human beings who are
emotionally intelligent, available, kind and
empathetic of others. This ultimately is
also the very same thing we’d wish for our
staff teams and colleagues, and so it must
start from the top and be cascaded down,
thus helping us nurture and support our
Chloe Webster
Chloe Webster is an early years educator
with over 12 years of experience in the
early years sector.
She is a published author and advocate
of the sector. In addition to this, she also
has vast experience in social media
marketing and communication support
for early years businesses/settings. Chloe
currently has capacity to support settings,
practitioners, and leaders in an advisory/
consultancy role or to provide support on
efficiently marketing and promoting your
setting/business.
She can be reached by email at
chloelouisewebster@hotmail.com
children in developing essential emotional
skills, and building the foundations for
their future emotional well-being and selfregulation.
Children learn from their environments and
the behaviours they observe and so if they
see practitioners and leadership teams
taking care of each other, and having
open and honest conversations regarding
mental health and the needs of others.
This will then naturally develop for them as
they grow and learn, which will hopefully
create a society of emotionally intelligent
and kind young people.
20 August 2023 | parenta.com
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