Collaborative working

Local authority representatives acted as core partners in each of the Mayor's early years hubs.

The strong relationships built between the three hubs and their respective local authority partners has been key to their success. They have resulted in:

• improved data systems, which in turn facilitated better targeting of children eligible for funded two-year-old early education places
• joint campaigns to promote the funded two-year-old offer, including through birthday cards, leaflets, banners, videos and social media
• improved brokerage and outreach to identify eligible children and support their parents to choose a suitable early years provider

"Early years hubs cannot exist without the support of the local authority."

- Hub lead

By encouraging providers to work collaboratively, hubs were able to improve the transition process for children moving between nurseries, or from nursery to school.

For the Working Together Hub, supporting the transition process was part of its early years mentor programme, which you can read more about in this DDA case study. The hub encouraged PVIs and schools to develop good working relationships, enabling them to have constructive discussions about children’s development and progress.

All three hubs were also involved in collaborative work (as part of a task and finish group) to improve transitions for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). They produced two key documents, which you can download and use:

• A collection of best practice principles for transition reports in the early years - the group recommends that all London boroughs review the format, content and use of their current transition reports against these principles.
• A transition report template - this can be downloaded and used by all London boroughs, to support successful transition of children moving between early years settings, or from an early years setting to school.

You can find out more about the work of the SEND task and finish group, as well as other Mayoral projects to support children with SEND in the early years.

Managing an early years setting can be difficult and lonely. Many nursery owners and managers reported feeling isolated prior to the hubs' existence, whereas hub network meetings gave them an opportunity to share their concerns and provide practical and emotional support to each other.

This was particularly important during the COVID-19 pandemic, when many hub meetings were moved online to allow this local support to continue.

"The personal relationships that have been built between school early years leads and managers of PVIs through the network mean that people now pick up the phone, ask for advice and share information more readily than they ever used to."

- Early years mentor

The Wandle Early Years Hub benefited from building partnerships around the existing structure of the Wandle Teaching School Alliance. This meant that there was an existing understanding of how partnerships need to work and the appropriate structure. From there, the hub could work on building relationships with new partners, such as a local PVIs, with whom no existing connections existed. Wandle reported that being clear about shared priorities and having in place an agreed theory of change was central to a successful approach.

Find out more about this in the set up and manage a hub section of the toolkit.