Vocal Babies - Organisational Learning

These last two years of the Vocal Babies project have all been about development, sustainability and legacy. We recognise the positive impact our model has on families and the wider community and wanted to find a way to distill our experience and inspire others to use a version of our model in their own settings.  Below are the headline learning points throughout this project.

We’ve been delivering Early Years music sessions for a number of years and in 2008 developed a model called Vocal Babies which we’ve used all over Kent. The idea of the sessions is to incorporate singing, Makaton signing, puppets, instruments and props. We run Vocal Babies as an 8-week course in children’s centers, community spaces, nurseries libraries and frankly, wherever we feel we will reach parents or carers who do not usually access this type of workshop.

Over the last 2-years we received Youth Music Funding to continue to offer this vital provision across Thanet and Dover and also train up 40 volunteers to be able to offer this provision in their own settings. We’ve trained people from all walks of life including parents, grandparents, social workers, carers, youth workers, nursery workers, and those working for charitable organisations.

Through the project we have captured valuable data, which has been evaluated however, we also wanted to identify some key organisational learning as part of the evaluation process.  These last two years of the Vocal Babies project have all been about development, sustainability and legacy. We recognise the positive impact our model has on families and the wider community and wanted to find a way to distill our experience and inspire others to use a version of our model in their own settings.  Below are the headline learning points throughout this project:

During this project we have forged strong links with our local health visiting team enabling:

• Greater understanding of the health benefits of singing and music making in regards to Early Child Development
• The formulation of a tailored assessment tool incorporating health developments alongside musical progress
• Evidence that our methodology links well to the Solihull approach and encourages the key principles of attachment, containment and Reciprocity
• The strengthening of the referral process onto our courses and the signposting from our courses onto other services
• Increased awareness of the health benefits of signing & music making amongst early years workers & parents /carers.

As an organisation, we have been using an outcomes model for many years; much of our learning around this approach can be attributed to our ongoing relationship with Youth Music and other key funders and partners. So, measuring outcomes is not a new idea to us however the idea of accurately measuring outcomes when the participants are between the ages of 3-24 months was a new challenge.

When we started this project, we wanted to accurately track the progress made by the babies but found that there wasn’t an evaluation tool geared around the early years age group or the type of creative work we were doing. With help from our local Health Visiting team we developed our own assessment tool, modeled on the ‘ages and stages’ framework. We looked at which developmental indicators could be linked to our sessions and formulated an easy to use tool, which parents and carers could fill out as they participated in our courses. This enabled parents to comment on the following aspects of their baby’s development at the beginning and end of the course:

• Personal, social & emotional development
• Communication, Language & literacy
• Cognitive Development (learning, thinking & problem solving)
• Movement / Physical Development.

We tailored the assessment tool for the following age groups: 2 months, 6 months, 1 year and 2 years. This allowed us to capture the very acute progression babies’ show alongside their expected development from a health point of view. Having an assessment tool which tracks developmental progression has been a very useful for the following reasons:

• We have been able to accurately track progress
• Parents / carers have seen first hand the impact of music making for early years.
• We have a more robust body of evidence, which reinforces the wealth of experience, understanding and anecdotal evidence we’ve gained over the years of delivering these workshops

Risks with this type of assessment tool

As with all forms of evidence that require observation, there is an element of subjectivity and sometimes a risk that participants fill out forms based on what they think you as the organizer want to hear. We mitigated this risk by keeping all data anonymous – we asked participants to pick their own code word so that we could match week 1 assessments to week 8 but other than that we did not know who had filled in which assessments. We also found that parents were genuinely intrigued to track the progress of their babies over the course of an 8-week period so filled out the assessments very honestly.

There are other factors at work beyond our control however when you couple the parental assessments with our music leader observations and anecdotal evidence such as seeing a baby sign for the first time, or hearing that they are singing along to some of the songs at home and you get a much fuller picture.

We cannot solely attribute a baby’s development to our Vocal Babies programme, but that’s OK, we didn’t set out to do that. There is plenty of research-based evidence to tell us that participating in creative musical activity leads to improvements in the outcomes we are measuring against. Instead our focus was to provide access to high-quality creative musical activity, increase the enabling factors and reduce the risk factors. We have been doing this for many years, however the last two years have been about identifying the enabling and risk factors and putting into words how we have gone about addressing them.

Enabling factors

• Free provision – This ensures that everyone is on an equal playing field to start with and that money is not a barrier to any family participating.
• Creating a safe space – This is both from a practical and emotional point of view for parents and babies. Drawing on our awareness of Social Pedagogy we understand that the layout and atmosphere of a room can have a big impact on the experience of the group. If the room is too small, untidy or stuffy this can detract from the positive impact of the session. We have also learnt that clearing the room of all unnecessarily distractions before a session is paramount i.e toys, noisy equipment etc. From an emotional point of view and using some key Solihul principles we understand that in order for learning and emotional development to take place we must make sure that both parents and babies feel safe. This is an underpinning concept within the ‘containment’ theory. We have developed our model to ensure that parents are made to feel as safe and unexposed as possible during sessions so that they in turn can put their babies at ease. We have done this by always having two members of staff at each session, one to lead the session musically and another to take a more pastoral role. We also include a 30-minute social time at the end of each session to give parents a chance to talk and reflect. 
• Using a team of skilled and experienced staff
• Using engaging and positive musical activities
• Singing ‘A capella’  – we have found that families are much more likely to sing the songs they’ve learnt outside of the sessions if they don’t rely on backing tracks

Risk Factors

• ‘No Shows’ – over the years of delivering vocal babies we’ve seen a fairly consistent pattern in those families who would benefit the most from our sessions, signing up but for one reason or another not making it through the door. We have tried to combat this with a very personable approach to the booking process, following up any e-conversation with a phone call, and offering a meeting to look around the venue and meet the staff before the course starts. We have found that this helps to alleviate any anxiety about joining a new group however it’s still an ongoing issue for some of the most vulnerable families in our community.
• Venues not always having the same ethos – When we are delivering sessions in another venue, we obviously don’t have control over how the venue staff interact with our participants before and after a session. On the whole this isn’t an issue however there has been the odd occasion when a stressed receptionist hasn’t given the warm welcome that we would expect. We have combatted this by posting one of our members of staff on the front door to welcome participants rather than leaving it to chance.
• Social barriers – We have found that parents or carers can often be concerned about how their baby will behave during a session especially if their child is particularly vocal. We have known parents to simply stop attending if they feel that their child is being a distraction to others. We have worked hard during this project to make parents feel very safe within sessions and less anxious about their child’s behaviour. We have also encouraged parents who feel that their children are loud and boisterous that this can be used positively when making music and singing.
• Breaks in the run – We have found that running the courses for a consecutive 8-weeks is the best way to keep attendance consistent. Any breaks within this flow always have an effect on attendance and sometimes also on the positive impact of the sessions.

On reflection, we have seen many lives positively impacted through music making opportunities and are more convinced than ever that this type of work within an early years context is absolutely vital. This project has forged some strong pathways within the community and our focus is now to continue to see these pathways used and strengthened.