LEAP - creative health in early years
Find below the latest evaluation from our creative health initiative into early years - Little Explorers And Parents and families project or LEAP. This Northern Ballet initiative was focused in Nursery settings and was delivered by Early Years Practitioners with aspirations of family involvement. As the evaluation document below describes the key aims were to offer an accessible way for pre-school children from disadvantaged areas to engage in movement, music, storytelling, and multisensory experiences. The LEAP project has been piloted in five EY settings across northern England and an evaluation was conducted to gather insights from key people to inform its scalability and transferability. Please download and share the evaluation document and its findings with interested colleagues. The document includes contact details and full acknowledgements.
Project Guide
Evaluation Documents
The evaluation findings demonstrate that the LEAP project was successfully implemented in each of the five pilot sites and that a range of benefits were reported by those involved. Early years practitioners gained skills, knowledge and confidence in using creative, movement-based approaches that could be used in their everyday practice. Children enjoyed the varied activities and experienced benefits in terms of enhanced school readiness. There are likely to be particular benefits for children living in more deprived areas, who we know from previous research have a higher risk of not being school ready than those in less deprived areas. There were some barriers experienced by low-income families and those with English as a second language, highlighting a need to explore different ways to engage families from all communities. Our findings suggest that the LEAP project could be scaled up and implemented in other settings across the UK. Future delivery should build on what worked well about the pilot project and target settings where the LEAP approach offers something new.