Challenges Faced by Leaders in Early Contemporary Years :: Social Issues, Collaboration, Communication

Katzenbach and smith (1993) state that ‘‘a team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, approach and performance goals for which they hold themselves mutually accountable’’ as each individual needs to be given the opportunity to put forward and link their personal strengths with their roles and responsibilities in order to enhance and empower the team as a whole. ‘’There is a failure in society to have a single, clear view of the function of early childhood provisions’’ (Jones and Pound, 2008, p. 22). This could cause implications for professionals working together as they could disagree on the goals or outcomes of the setting. Leaders need to support the practitioners within the setting and encourage them to reach their full potential. In contrast, many practitioners may not want to take on the roles of a leader. Jones and Pound (2006) suggest many practitioners have assumed the role rather than applied for it. Often these changes can cause many problems to those who try to resist it due to not wanting extra work or even because they simply do not understand the new job role. Leaders can overcome this by ensuring all practitioners are treated equally and all ideas are considered (Pound and Jones 2008). Wall (2006) embraces Lumsden’s (2005) notion suggesting that a collaboration between professionals is essential to share expertise, information and skills. Wall (2006) supports the need for information to be shared in order to meet the needs of the families. This implies that it is a relationship between individual practitioners that will ultimately decide whether multi agency is effective or not. Jones and Pound (2008) state that a characteristic of an effective multi agency team can exchange information using agreed communication systems. However; there are various challenges which can arise from this, such as; practitioners not having enough time to share information on a regular basis due to their responsibilities. Occasionally co-location makes this easier. Children centres are an ‘’exciting and promising initiative’’ built upon from the governments 10 year strategy for children offering a wide range of services combined in order to make a †˜one stop shop’ which provides resources for lower-income families (Pugh and Duffy 2010 p. 123). Additional government funding has been set in place intended to improve practice and level of qualifications in the early year’s sector. Pugh and Duffy (2010) suggested this was needed to improve practitioners knowledge.