5 tips for ensuring the voice of the child is being used in your early years setting.
A high-quality early years setting values, listens and responds to the voice of the child. Pauline Milsted (Early Years Consultant) shares with us 5 top tips for ensuring that your early years setting values the voice of the child.
A high-quality early years setting values, listens and responds to the voice of the child. Pauline Milsted (Early Years Consultant) shares with us 5 top tips for ensuring that your early years setting values the voice of the child.
1. Ensure the environment reflects your children’s interests, schemas and stage of development.
Case Study:
As an Early Years Consultant I often visit settings, when I visit good settings I see the children in the environment. For example, I might see a whole dinosaur area set up with two children enthusiastically playing. While hearing a small comment from their key worker, “Oh Johnny and Isla love dinosaurs”. Showing they have listened to and responded to what the children like, what there current interests are - what motivates them to learn. I might see in another corner cars and ramps set up for children to explore the movement of their cars. While noticing that there is a lot of scarfs and balls around the setting. I look in the tuff-tray that has lots of lines drawn in it, with the toy cars placed inside. I turn and see a child who is obviously in the trajectory schema, throwing toys, jumping around and exploring their own movement. Again, just a tiny comment from a member of staff showing they understand that child. “Oh that’s Jack at the moment he loves the swings and throwing things. We are trying to support his schema!” This to me is always the start of a successful visit where I can see the voice of the child, staff who understand their children and are following their interests. A setting where I think those children are heard.
2. Involve children in reflecting and developing your enabling environment. Ask the children what they would or would not like in the setting. This could be that they take photos of what makes them happy or sad. Part of a small group discussion or circle time. You could also facilitate conversation through the use of puppets or while drawing pictures, to help children to communicate in different ways. When thinking about buying new things for the environment you can involve the children in researching looking in catalogues or making shopping lists together.
3. Observe children carefully. Remember that the voice of the child is not just verbal. We communicate in all sorts of ways and not all children will have the language skills to use words. Therefore, it is important that we take the time to observe, watch children’s cues, body language, behaviour, learn about children and their families from others involved in their lives parent/carers and other professionals; alongside listening.
4. Empower children to have their voices heard. In practice this might look like giving children choices and opportunities to practice having control over their world. Encouraging children to participate in setting routines and activities. Or making sure that we have the correct communication tools in place for them to communicate with others, for example, PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System) cards, or staff who are trained in Makaton.
5. Create an environment and ethos that promotes children’s self-confidence and self-esteem. Build nurturing positive relationships that encourage the development of self-confidence and self-esteem. Have a curriculum and ethos that has embedded in it an approach that supports children’s emotional literacy and resilience.
With children’s mental health week 2024 focusing on the theme ‘My Voice Matters’. We have developed an audit resource to be used in early years settings to ensure that we are capturing the voice of the child through our practice. This tool has been designed to support early years staff reflections and evaluations that can feed into the continuous development of the setting.
This audit tool contains 3 easy to use audits, breaking it down into bitesize chunks.
Key Person Voice of Child
Enabling Environment Voice of Child
Safeguarding Voice of the Child
This document comes in a pdf, allowing you to print and use the pages as and when you need them.
What do we mean by the phrase ‘listening to the voice of the child’?
The phrase voice of the child is often used in educational settings, health and social work, to describe the valuing of children’s input and contribution to decisions, things that matter to them and outcomes. The voice of the child is more then listening to the spoken voice of children; listening is when we physically hear what others have to say. A quick google search of the dictionary definition of listening refers to listening as the tuning in and hearing sound or the act of paying attention to someone or something you can hear.
The phrase voice of the child is often used in educational settings, health and social work, to describe the valuing of children’s input and contribution to decisions, things that matter to them and outcomes. The voice of the child is more then listening to the spoken voice of children; listening is when we physically hear what others have to say. A quick google search of the dictionary definition of listening refers to listening as the tuning in and hearing sound or the act of paying attention to someone or something you can hear.
Maybe the term active listening would sit more comfortably with us as a term for fully embracing the voice of the child. As after all, active listening is making a conscious effort to really listen and understand what someone is trying to share with us. It goes beyond the act of just hearing, but implies that we are trying to look for the intent, the meaning, the clues – almost like a detective behind what they have said; to truly be present and understand. Through, healthy relationships that show concern and care, positive open-body language, by limiting our interruptions or opinions, but rather just listening and being open-ended in our responses as we engage with the children.
Although, active listening is a part of understanding the voice of the child. It is not the full picture of understanding and valuing the voice of the child. We connect with the voice of the child in a variety of ways through, spoken and non-spoken language, body language, behaviour, arts, play and many other ways. Perhaps, therefore it is important to acknowledge we hear the voice of the child in a multitude of ways; but also, it is probably beneficial to unpick what we actually mean by the voice of the child. What is it that we are actually tuning in to…?
The following definition of the voice of the child taken from the NSPCC (2024):
The term "voice of the child" refers to the real involvement of children in expressing their views, opinions, and experiences. It includes both verbal and nonverbal communication and goes beyond simply seeking their views to actively including them in decision-making processes.
Similarly, Gwent Safeguarding states:
The voice of the child refers not only to what children (including those who are preverbal and non-verbal) say directly but to their behaviour as a whole. Facilitating the child’s voice involves developing relationships and creating environments in which children feel comfortable and confident sharing their thoughts and experiences. It also means making sure that children’s views, opinions, and preferences are sought and listened to when decisions are made which impact their life.
Both of these definitions share that the voice of the child is, us facilitating ways in which we can actively listen, tuning in to and observe children to hear and respond to their wishes, desires, thoughts, experiences and opinions. Using this in a way to support their learning and development, to inform practice that impacts on their lives, decisions that are going to impact them. It is interesting that the Gwent Safeguarding definition discusses how facilitating children’s voices is through the development of relationships and through the creation of our environments. Something that we are not too dissimilar with in the early years.
When we look at the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), we have four overarching principles the Unique Child, Positive Relationships, Enabling Environments and Learning and Development. The unique child is essentially an extension of the voice of the child, when we think about the unique child, we are thinking about being child-led, about understanding individual children – their behaviour, interests, stages of developing, culture, live experiences. And then producing positive relationships and an enabling environment that fully supports this wonderfully unique child; so that we inevitably see learning and development.
An interesting thought as we explore the voice of the child in the early years. During January and February 2026, we are doing a new blog series on the voice of the child. Please do check out our blog posts each week as we explore different topics around exploring the voice of the children, including things such as top tips, question and answers and much more. Or head over to our socials at Growing Together Early Years for more content.
