For many of you, this will be your first week back from the summer holidays - we hope you all had a good break. It will be a busy season coming up for SOSCN with lots of events planned between now and the end of the year. Further details for these will be coming soon, but first, please see below for some recent developments, as well as a request for some information for SOSCN's next grant bid.

We Need Your Help - Membership Feedback Survey

We are seeking your input through a short online survey (three main questions) - it should only take a couple of minutes to complete. We are currently developing a grant bid for the next three years and your feedback will let us know how we are doing and also find out what activities, training and resources you would be interested in us providing.

Membership survey: https://freeonlinesurveys.com/s/brmiad0h

Participation in a prize draw is offered to all who complete the survey.

Deadline for responses: Friday 6th September 2019

New Free Resource: 'Improving Children and Young People's Understanding of their Wellbeing'

Children in Scotland have just e-published a resource for teachers and practitioners (including OSC staff) with practical activities for children to better understand their wellbeing. Activities are age-grouped and run from early years to early high school. There are also links to further resources and information. You can download a copy here:

https://childreninscotland.org.uk/out-now-new-wellbeing-resource-for-teachers-and-practitioners/

Funding Factsheet

In case you missed it, here is a link to a recent funding factsheet we highlighted over the holidays:

https://soscn.org/downloads/news/funding-factsheet-jul-2019.pdf

Workforce Survey

Our workforce survey 2018 results are now available. Our 2019 survey will be opened very shortly, so look out for more details on that soon. Download a copy of last year's results here:

https://soscn.org/downloads/research/OSC_Workforce_Survey_Results_2018.pdf

Getting It Right For Every Child (GIRFEC) and SHANARRI Wellbeing in Practice

We are currently offering our GIRFEC and SHANARRI Wellbeing in Practice training. The training session will look at how to successfully implement the SHANARRI wellbeing indicators within daily out of school care practice, and how to evidence this, including the creation of children's personal development plans, as well as service quality improvement and development plans. We shall look at each wellbeing indicator and what this means in terms of developing good practice, how this relates to the UNCRC and also signpost to additional resources.

For further information, please see this link: https://soscn.org/participate/girfec-training

Teaching STEM in OSC - Half-day Training Masterclass

Saturday 14th September 2019 - Albany Centre, Glasgow

10:00am - 12:45pm

This training event is aimed at practitioners working within OSC services. Course content will be of interest to previous participants in SOSCN Creative Computing training, as well as new participants who are interested in finding out ways to introduce computing in a fun way into their service.

For further information and how to book, please see this link: https://soscn.org/participate/teaching-stem-in-osc

Free Academic Articles on Play

The European Early Childhood Education Research (EECER) Journal has a Virtual Special Issue on Play and is giving free access to 10 play articles published within the last 2 years. The articles are free to download until end of October.

The Journal says:

'In this curated virtual EECERJ edition we begin with a review paper which focuses on current knowledge of the value of play on child development (Lai, Ang, Por and Liew) followed by five papers which focus on different types of play, including risky play (Lavrysen, Bertrands, Leyssen, Smets, Vanderspikken and Graef), home play (Lin and Li), socio-dramatic and imaginative play (Loizou), messy play (Gascoyne) and rough and tumble play (Storli and Sandseter).

These are followed by two papers which focus on the value of play for friendships (Coelho, Torres, Fernandes and Santos) and the development of language skills (Stangeland) and two which focus on play and citizenship (Grindheim) and finally on how play can promote the inclusion of young migrant children (Kalkman and Clark).

We hope that this selection provides a further stimulus to professional practice and a guide for those policy makers who shape early childhood pedagogies and adds to the body of rigorous and systematic, peer reviewed evidence on the importance of play in our lives.'

Download the articles here: https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/play-vsi/