Q&A with Professor Eunice Lumsden

8 min read:

1. What moment or experience from your own childhood education has had the biggest impact on you as an adult?

For me it’s not one experience that has had the biggest impact. Rather it’s my whole experience of childhood.

As a child I never quite fitted in. I was born in 1959. My mother came from Sri Lanka and my father was English. We lived in Birmingham and at that time mixed marriages were very rare, and I always remember us having some very difficult experiences.

I was educated in the 60s and 70s – a time when many of the issues addressed today were invisible or hidden under the carpet. I always felt different to my peers and have many memories of being treated differently in school.

So, it’s my difference that has driven my life and career – that’s the key thing that’s made me who I am.

2. Is there a significant person in your life that inspired you to travel the path you have done in your work?

It’s really interesting to think about this question because I don’t think there is one person. We were quite an insular family, on the fringes of the communities where we lived.

But there was one pivotal experience for me. I think I was 12 or 13 when my history teacher told us a story that strongly resonated with me. She had been a residential social worker and had taken two of the children to visit London Zoo. She’d had to tell them off for something or other. One of them kept laughing and this made her cross, so she asked him why he was laughing. He said, “It’s because people might think you’re my mummy.”

On hearing this, I immediately knew I wanted to be a social worker. I wanted to be that person who would make people feel that they belonged and were a part of something. Looking back on it now, that story spoke powerfully to the person inside me.

3. What does inclusion and diversity mean to you?

For me this question is always about power, and how we use our power.

We have the power to include and we have the power to exclude. We can make people feel like pots of gold or make them feel inadequate. The most important thing for me is that we use this power wisely and always to enable others.

People talk about inclusion and diversity a lot and it is a question that touches me personally and professionally. Interweaved in both are experiences of not being included because of my heritage and gender.

People are often asked how they incorporate Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in their work, but for me my rich cultural heritage means that inclusion is integral to my very being: the way I think, feel and live my life. So, it’s not something I address as an issue as such, because it’s always present.

I hope that makes sense, Caroline – in essence it’s all about power and whether we use it to be enabling or disabling to others. It is about recognising oppression and ensuring you always work to address this through anti-discriminatory practice. I think about it as making sure that the table is large enough for everybody to have a place.

4. How do we make sure we are listening to, and hearing, all children’s voices?

It is really important that we understand how important non-verbal and verbal communication are – children communicate their ‘voice’ in lots of different ways. They may not have the words to say to us what’s going on for them, but they can tell us through their behaviour and body language. If we know the child, we often intuitively know if something is not quite right. They might refuse to do something or have a look of unhappiness in their eyes. Non-verbal communication can tell us more about the child’s voice, so it’s very important that we tune into this.

5. How would you define ‘holistic safeguarding’?

The word holistic says it all.

I find the work of the neuropsychiatrist Dan Siegel helpful here. His four ‘S-words’ are a useful checklist. How seen, safe, secure and soothed is everyone in the setting?

I don’t see this as being only about children, but everybody who is part of the organisation. For example, practitioners need to ask, Is this a safe place for me to work? The question of whether they are ‘safe’ to be working with children also needs addressing.

So, it applies to the whole thing – children, families, staff and the organisation itself.

6. How important are professional learning and qualifications to raising the status of the early years?

Qualifications are vitally important for anybody that’s working with children and families. We need to have the knowledge that will enable children to find and create different pathways for themselves. I often say that children and families cannot choose the people they work with, so we have a duty to make sure we are always the best professional we can be.

We’ve been putting millions and millions of pounds into the early years for the last 20 years, yet its status hasn’t changed. Practitioners are still on low pay and the qualification levels remain low. The fundamental problem and challenge in the sector is one of status and recognition.

So, if you think about it, it’s like having a jug that we need to fill with water, but that jug is covered with cling film. There aren’t any holes in the clingfilm, so there are no routes in. The water spills everywhere. I often think of the early years like that – we have a jug that is empty, and however we try to fill it, it’s not working.

I think it’s because we haven’t dealt with the root causes. It’s fundamentally about how we see our youngest children and what the sector can offer them. Is it about providing quality early learning opportunities that enable children to grow and thrive with a highly qualified staff or is it childcare so that their parents can go out to work?

7. How important is it that policy makers use up to date and appropriate research when designing new policies?

It is vitally important that they use the latest research, but they also need to pay attention to the research that has gone before. One of the huge challenges we face in the sector is that the policymakers keep changing. Early years is a complex area and the fact that new people are constantly coming in to lead on policy is a big problem. They haven’t got that historical knowledge, which is so important, so they start to redo things without understanding why.

8. What qualities does an early years leader need to have? Can all of these be learned or are some part of their character or personality?

Here it’s important that we differentiate between leadership and management. The world is full of different types of leaders. Everybody that works with children, young people and families is, in some way or other, a leader. If we think about the early years, whatever level the practitioner is working at, they are all leading and role modelling with children and their colleagues. These leadership skills can be harnessed and developed.

Managers need to recognise the attributes and skills of those they work with and provide opportunities so they can continually develop them.

9. There can be a lot of pressure in education to focus on learning outcomes. How can schools and settings ensure that they have a whole team approach to focusing on the process of how to get to those outcomes, and not just on the outcomes themselves?

For me this is all about the values of the organisation. Unless these ingredients are right then the learning outcomes for children are never going to be met.

Children need the staff to work together. If you’re working in a setting with unhappy staff who feel that they are not listened to or communicated properly with, it is going to have a huge impact on learning. How the staff work and the relationships between them, helps shape the environment. Children thrive in healthy environments.

Also, for children to meet the outcomes that are imposed externally, staff need to have the confidence to assess when those outcomes are not right for the particular children. This shows that they know their children well and can recognise that the building blocks may not be in place for them to achieve a particular outcome at a given time, but with the right support, they will be able to in the future.

Fundamentally, Caroline, it is about an organisation with clear values shared by the whole staff. This creates a culture where everyone can thrive.

10. If you had an entirely free weekend what would you choose to do?

Really I should say that I would love to spend the time with my children and family, but actually what I would want is to go away somewhere where I’d get pampered. A weekend full of luxury massages and spa experiences, so I could just turn the whole world off and focus on me.

Professor Eunice Lumsden

Eunice is Professor of Child Advocacy and Head of Childhood Youth and Families at the University of Northampton.  She is a registered Social Worker and has had a number of advisory roles for the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Social Care. She is also a member for Education and Childcare Route Panel for the Institute of Apprenticeships and Technical Education.