CREC launches Thriving Lives Toolkit to support children of Armed Forces Families - Early years settings invited to join the pilot

On Wednesday 4th June CREC launched it’s draft Early Years Thriving Lives Toolkit for the early years sector to pilot. The toolkit is a reflective tool to support Early Years sector to deliver the highest quality of provision for Armed Forces Families and their young children.

Commissioned by the SCiP Alliance to sit alongside their toolkits for schools, colleges and universities, the aim is to raise awareness of the specific strengths and needs of this community and to support the early years sector to improve the way that they engage and support this particular group of children.

We’ve done the research to inform the toolkit but now we need to know if it works in practice - we’re looking for Early Years settings to sign up and ‘play’ with the Toolkit! There are 8 key principles we’ve identified and the toolkit supports you to work through each in turn, consider where you are in your practice, and what you might do next. It’s an opportunity to record and celebrate what you’re already doing, and to action plan what you might do to become even better at supporting Armed Forces Families and their children.

We’ll provide you with the toolkit and a explanatory video but, in short, we want you to try out the tool and we’ll then reach out to you towards the end of the pilot period (October 2025) to ask you to feed back via a survey and/or a focus group. We might also contact you before that if you’ve indicated at registration that you’d be prepared to speak to us individually.

If you are an Early Years setting that wants to develop the way you work with and support children from Armed Forces families then please sign up here during June 2025 and we’ll be in touch ASAP: https://forms.gle/4gUzfcy5MzLp7zAN9