CALA lockdown virtual support sessions a 'huge success'
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
The Care and Learning Alliance, largest third sector early learning and childcare organisation in the North, highlighted some of their successes and achievements from the past year at its AGM today on Friday,
Held virtually for the first time since the charity began over 40 years ago, the meeting heard that despite the Covid pandemic and associated challenges there had been a huge increase in services and support to children and families in 2019-20.
The positive news that six more of their early learning and childcare settings would be offering an increase to 1140 hours of funded care within the next few weeks was also shared.
Among the highlights of the year was an almost 90% satisfaction rate from members for the quality of CALA’s support for a wide range of early
years organisations, as well as processing of PVGs for Disclosure Scotland to ensure a safe workforce, amongst other things.
CALA's work supporting a strong and quality early learning workforce was also evidenced by a large growth in the organisation's training activities, which are now a blended approach of e- learning and face to face in response to need, and 93% of users rated these as good to
excellent.
Their e-learning modules had been accessed over 4526 times up until the end of March, a doubling of their use compared with last year.
The organisation covers all areas of Highland and Moray’s remote and rural life, with almost 260 members of staff including the temporary relief practitioners working in the CALA Staffbank to support all nurseries and out of school care.
The six months since the start of lockdown were also highlighted with the growth in CALA’s online learning and virtual support sessions to over 17,000 being lauded a huge success. This includes the accessing by more than 7,000 users from 31 local authorities across Scotland during the Covid period of the Keeping Children Safe child protection-related modules which were developed in partnership with the Highland Child Protection Committee.
Margaret Kinsella, chair of CALA's volunteer board, said: "The statistic and anecdotal comments really speak for themselves and we are delighted to have developed and diversified our services to provide a wide range of support that meets the needs of children and families across the area.
"We were able to build on the strong foundation of skilled and dedicated staff during the Covid pandemic. We opened six key worker hubs as well as a range of support for parents, children and staff across the sector via our website or through direct work such as deliveries of play activity parcels.
"On behalf of the Board I want to pay tribute to those staff for their ongoing work and positive approach. "
Chief executive Jaci Douglas said: "While it has been a challenging year in many respects and we have had to make some difficult decisions, we have all worked tirelessly to make it a success and I want to echo the board's thanks to all our hard-working and dedicated staff and to our partners, without whom we couldn't provide the quality services that make such a difference to families and communities."
