Understand how to support positive outcomes for children and young people.

Task A - Written report
There are 3 different factors that can impact on the outcomes and life chances of children and young people.
- Social factors
- Economic factors
- Cultural factors
Social factors may include things such as housing, community and disability, amongst others.
For example poor housing and deprived areas can impact upon the social wellbeing of a child with the family perhaps unable to access provision and services available to other socio economic groups. The physical health of a child can be compromised by poor housing conditions and this can subsequently affect school attendance. Poor clothing and presentation of the child can draw negative attention from the community and lead to exclusion from friendship and peer relationships. As can be seen by the above narrative, there is some relationship between the factors and it would be unrealistic to ignore such connections. For example, a restricted income can prohibit access to services and stagnate home conditions alongside a lack of resources for adequate clothing and food. Poverty is key factor in the reduction of life chances of a child. This may be a result of intergenerational worklessness where a legacy of unemployment is the available model for the child.
For ethnic groups, who may already feel excluded from mainstream society and draw suspicion and prejudice from their community, social and economic factors can be felt more actutely and the sense of isolation much more difficult to navigate.
Parent or child disability can also reduce opportunity and life chances for a child and if not adequately supported can lead to children failing to realize their potential.
Areas for support can be identified via children, schools and families or educational provision and referrals made to appropriate agencies. Surestart centers offer a wide range of activities and groups that can help to improve the parenting model with programs such as Webster Stratton, Tripple P and strengenting families. These services are offered alongside play and stay sessions and educational programs. Parents who take up such support will also benefit from increased social inclusion and peer led support with elective or aspirational parents providing positive influence and role models.
Nursery provsion can also be an important supporting factor and offer early intervention to positively influence outcomes for the child. For parents who find it difficult to financially resource their child, the two and three year offer is available.
In my experience as a practitioner I have helped to support positive outcomes for children in the following ways.
1 learn and develop
I have supported this by introducing new ways to learn in a fun way, I have focused on key points that children are struggling with and worked hard to help develop their skills within the topic.
2 make a positive contribution
3 develop confidence and social skills
I have helped support this by interacting with each child at different levels, I have also tried to ensure that the children are interacting with one another, I have introduced group play were the children are getting observed by an adult whilst playing together or doing an educational activity, I assess what the children are doing, how they are communicating with one another and what their body language is telling me so I know what needs working on.
4 Be healthy
I have supported this by ensuring there is a wide choice of fruit at snack time and introducing activities for outdoor play that involves a variety of exercise and movement
However not all children from such backgrounds will face such challenge and one must be careful not to label families and individuals based on socio economic factors, disability or ethnic criteria. Ma’ny families within these groups demonstrate self-sufficiency and resilience and offer a positive parenting model for their children