What we are trying to do
The Brigshaw Children’s Zone focuses on supporting parents and families with children aged from 0-3 years.
Our aim is to work closely with our local families to support and to build strong embedded relationships within our community. The Brigshaw Children’s Zone focus will be on reducing parental stress; promoting positive mental and physical health and wellbeing; encouraging social connections; and sharing evidence based information. Together we are working towards providing a cradle to career education that allows our children to enjoy lives of choice and opportunity.
"Great groups. My daughter loves it and you can see her progress.
Thank you!"
Why the first three years?
The first few years of life are a hugely important time with babies’ brains developing at their fastest rate ever, creating tons of connections, or synapses, to help babies to learn about the world around them. Babies’ brains are directly developing from the experiences they have with their caregivers. We know this is a vulnerable time for so many parents no matter their age, background or income levels. The aim of our work is to build strong relationships with our Brigshaw community (Kippax, Allerton Bywater, Methley and Swillington) to supporting them to attend our parent infant programmes and access other resources within the area. We work closely with our local Children’s Centre to signpost and support our parents, families and children.
"It's been lots of fun, we now build sensory stories into our own play time. It's been good to see how well my child settled in a setting like this before he starts Nursery."
How we are doing this?
Our work includes:
- Meeting families with young children (0-3 years) to provide support and build relationships as early as possible.
- Providing 6 week free baby massage and baby yoga classes to parents to support parents to use nurturing touch with their babies.
- Providing half termly Early Language and Communication play based groups led by our Speech and Language Therapist.
- Working with community spaces in our local area to provide a play based lending library supported by Boromi.
- Signposting parents and families to our Children’s Centres (based in Kippax and Great Preston).
- Providing workshops to support parents of children with special educational needs as well as bespoke workshops to support families with their child’s sleeping routine.
- Working with other professionals to support parents with their child's dental health.
- Working with JPL Catering to provide diet and nutrition workshops delivered by their executive chef.
- Developing our Social and Emotional Health support in each of our primary schools for our children through toolkits such as Thrive and Place2Be.
"It has been great for picking up tips for play and language development, really helpful and [my child] really enjoyed it."
Meet our Brigshaw Children’s Zone Team
Hannah Dickinson - Brigshaw Early Years Trust Leader
Luke Robbins - Ross - Director of Primary
Adele Dempster - Brigshaw Cluster
Rachel Staszewsky - The Yorkshire Speechie (Speech and Language Therapist)
Kimberley Holmes - Baby Massage and Children's Yoga Teacher
