 Hello, today I am going to be reviewing Supporting Vulnerable Children in the Early Years. This is edited by Pat Beckley, I'll put some info about her on the screen now. She's the editor, the chapters are written by a wide variety of different people working in the field. Several of the chapters are actually written by Pat herself. Those I would argue are possibly the best chapters, but I don't know, that's just my point of view. I think they're the most practical and kind of down to earth and stuff. But the book's good, I like it. Spoiler alert! Okay, so it's basically, what is it? It's basically kind of a summary of the research to date and what we understand at the moment about supporting vulnerable kids in the earlier years. Okay, so let's have a look at the contents now. So you can see that like we're covering quite a wide range of different issues, things like inequality, poverty, the attainment gap. And you'll also see that the authors are quite wide ranging again as well in their sort of expertise. So it's interesting and the book looks both to kind of summarize the research and our understanding of the problems, but also throughout the book there are lots and lots of practical suggestions about what we working on the front line with children might be able to do in order to enable them to cope and thrive. So it was a bit harder than normal for me to decide what to show you to highlight because it's not really a book where there's kind of pretty stuff to be honest. It's quite dense and quite research heavy, but I'll try and give you a bit of a feel for what it's like. So basically this feels like a sort of book for like clever people or you'll feel like a clever people when you've read it. So yeah, it's kind of more sort of serious and longer and academic I guess in its tone. That said, I don't think it's not unreadable, like I don't mean to imply that in any way, I just tend to go with lighter, easier reads that's all. And this isn't, it's not an easy read, there's a lot of information in here and you probably want to read it more than once to really get the most from it. But it is completely like if you work with children, young people, you'll be reading this going, Oh yes, okay, I get that. Okay, I can try that. So yeah, don't don't be like off put by the fact that it's fairly dense, but just know there's a lot in here and it would take quite some reading. But you could dip in and out because really clear like each chapter stands alone. So you could just dip into the chapters that were yeah, most relevant to you. Okay, so the first page I wanted to show you. So pages 100 to 101. And here, I think I liked this bit and just wanted to highlight this for you can pause and have a like proper read if you want to get a bit of a feel for it. But this was thinking about you know, school staff and poverty and what schools can do to help and that kind of thing. And I thought that this nicely showed that although this is quite a research heavy book that it's not just awareness raising, it's also thinking about practical steps that we can take, which I think is important because sometimes we, you know, particularly in this field at the moment there's lots of stuff around like adverse childhood experiences. And we've become quite aware of them and the problems, but we don't necessarily know. Okay, so what what can I do? And there are ideas in here. Okay, next page I wanted to highlight for you was 115. So I wanted to show you this page because this shows one of the little reflections boxes and we get these throughout the book and I really like them. These are moments that make you stop and pause in your reading and have a think about how you can apply this and maybe also reflect on your good practice that you're doing at the moment and then thinking about how you can expand on that as well. And so I really like this and these are the kind of things that if you wanted to use this book with colleagues, you could reflect on these things together also. So I really liked these and as I say, they're throughout the book. So that's that's good. Okay, so then page 195. I have highlighted this page because it's a case study and I wanted to make you aware that throughout the book, this is illustrated with case studies, which I think really helps to bring it alive and helps us to think about how we can apply what we're learning and to really understand the sorts of things we're actually looking at here. And for me, the case studies did all feel kind of real. So sometimes in these books, the case studies feel a little bit contrived. But no, in this book generally, I found the case studies to feel like real kids that we could all identify with, which again, made it a much more practical read. And then 119. Okay, so page 119, I wrote down to highlight, this is just showing you a chapter N showing this is a proper grown up book with like references and suggestions for further reading, which is, I know like a pretty common thing in many books, but not always in the sorts of books that I'm recommending, which can often be a bit lighter and quicker and easier to read. So you can kind of see like the context in which this is set, the research it's drawing on, and also that there are some great recommendations for further reading, if you want to do even more reading. So yeah, gives you a bit of an idea. Okay, so what are the, what are the three things that I'm most like about this book? Number one, it engages a wide range of expert voices, and it draws on the latest evidence. Number two is that it provides suggested waste forwards, as well as just stating the problem. And number three, I think is that it's really comprehensive. And it feels like a really good overview of this kind of emerging and rapidly evolving area of research and understanding. So a kind of really good go to, if you want a good introduction on where we are at the moment. So yeah, would recommend it. I hope it was helpful. Do let me know if there are books or resources you would like me to review in future videos by leaving a comment below. And please do subscribe so that you'll be kept up to date with my latest videos, which are released every Tuesday and Friday. See you next time. Bye.