Keeping up to date with changes in legislation, practice and pedagogy can be a real headache, especially when there is so much information on the internet. I find that subscribing to some key sites (for free) helps to keep me in the know and ensures my practice is current.
Here I’ve listed some of my ‘go-to’ sites, which make getting information much easier and faster. Some of them you can decide how often you’d like emails, so you may only want them once a month or you can choose more often:
- CASPAR NSPCC updates This is an ‘awareness service for practice, policy and research’ with weekly emails. These are particularly good for the latest safeguarding and child protection news, from all parts of the UK. It also includes news for older children, children in care and social services updates
- http://www.parliament.uk/ for the House of Lords and House of Commons updates. The emails list all those things being discussed in Parliament, so it is not as targeted as some of the other sites. However, it does mean that you don’t miss important policy discussions that will have an effect on policy changes. I have watched some fascinating debates in the House of Lords, which really restored my faith in the system (see here for the post about this).
- http://www.chimat.org.uk/ ChiMat (short for Child and Maternal Health) detail links to ‘health intelligence and knowledge management’. This is part of Public Health England, and is an excellent round up of weekly news (from all the leading sources – papers, websites and other media), policy, reports, research, consultations and events.
- https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/public-health-england is the main link to Public Health England and has interesting blogs as well as information about the latest PHE campaign, for example, the Sugar cube app. If you are a Twitter user, you can also follow @PHE_children here
- For those of you who are studying, or who like to keep up to date on their journal articles, #ReadMyResearch is ideal. On this website, Taylor & Francis (which includes Routledge) give you free access to a selection of articles from across their entire portfolio, including those articles ‘which have got people talking on blogs, in the news and across social media’. Scroll down to Education to find Early Years specific papers.
See here for the original ‘Free information’ post, which also has lots of sources of free information.
