Somerset Council - Early years and childcare

Providing early help is more effective in promoting the welfare of children, young people and their families than reacting later. Early help means providing support as soon as a problem emerges, at any point in a child's life, from the foundation years through to the teenage years. Early help is both early in terms of age and early in the cycle of need.

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Somerset Play Forum

Somerset Play Forum works to support play provision across Somerset. We do this by...

• Representing the Play sector at meetings, locally, regionally and nationally.
• Providing information about resources and events that are of interest to the local play sector
• Supporting local play associations to provide high quality activities and events
• Hosting a county " Play Celebration" conference and networking events
• Providing small grants to help fund play days
• throughout the County
• Recognising individuals, organisations and events in Somerset that have made a valuable contribution to Play
• Advertising Play events taking place in Somerset
• Creating links between providers

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Early Years Learning Alliance

The Early Years Learning Alliance is the largest and most representative early year's membership organisation in England. A registered educational charity, the Alliance represents 14,000 member settings and supports them to deliver care and learning to over 800,000 families every year.

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Somerset Children & Young People

This area of the website has been designed to support parents and carers to find the information they need to help them with the job of 'being a parent'.

Being a parent can be the most wonderful job in the world but at some point all parents need a bit of help. Finding the right information and support can be difficult so, with the help of some Somerset parents and carers, we have identified the issues that most affect families and then gathered together the best web-based information and local support to help tackle some of these issues.

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The Daily Mile

The Daily Mile is a social physical activity, with children running or jogging – at their own pace – in the fresh air with friends. Children can occasionally walk to catch their breath, if necessary, but should aim to run or jog for the full 15 minutes. We want every child to have the opportunity to do The Daily Mile at primary school and are now working to build The Daily Mile's community with schools, local councils, sports bodies and other supporters in the UK and beyond.

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start 4 life

This website will help to support parents with young children giving simple guidance of how to make your children more active. The website also has lots of supporting links that range from foods to avoid and bottle feeding.

Your baby's favourite playmate is you so try to spend time playing with your baby every day. Did you know that playing actually requires a lot of your baby's brain and muscle power? It helps develop their social, intellectual, language and problem-solving skills – and is one of the main ways they learn about the world.

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NHS

This website gives a breakdown of government recommendations for physical activity levels at different ages ranging from non-walkers to toddlers/under 5s. It also helps to provide a clear understanding of what light activity to energetic activity is.

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Healthy Start

This website allows parents to find out information around food and nutrition for children; it also has contact information where you can email for support. You can apply to check if you are eligible for free healthy start vouchers.

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Better Health

Children in early years are encouraged to complete 180 minutes of physical activity every day, with 60 of these minutes to be higher intensity. Children aged over 5 are encouraged to be active for 60 minutes a day. From our fun Shake Up games to information about active hobbies and sports, here's everything you need to get your family moving.

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Positive About Breastfeeding

You can find information, advice and support with infant feeding and health and wellbeing in Somerset here. You can also find out how your organisation can become recognised as being 'Positive About Breastfeeding'.

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