Gillian Pugh

PROFILE

Dame Gillian Pugh, as she is know known, has been described by Naomi Eisenstadt (formerly national director of Sure Start) in these words: “I can think of no one in the voluntary sector who has made as significant a contribution to the well-being of children”.

Her life

Dame Gillian Pugh was Chief Executive of The Coram Family until her retirement in 2005. She had been working there for eight years, during which time she set up the Thomas Coram Centre for Children and Families in partnership with Camden Council. The Coram Family is England’s oldest children’s charity. Throughout her career, she has been a pioneer in contemporary childcare services and an important contributor to government thinking on education, social care and health services support for disadvantaged children and their families.

During her time at The Coram Family the charity:

Before taking up her post at The Coram Family, she worked at the National Children’s Bureau for 22 years. During that time she succeeded in setting up the Early Childhood Education Forum (now known as ECF).

Gillian has had many different roles during her distinguished career. As a member of the Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC); chair of the National Children’s Bureau; a visiting professor at the Institute of Education; Chair of the Advisory Committee for the Review of Primary Education; an advisor to the Select Committee for Children, Schools and Families and to the DCSF; member of the committee looking at support for vulnerable and excluded children, she has consistently contributed to public understanding of the issues surrounding children and families.

Her writing

Overall Gillian Pugh has written and edited more than thirty books. Pugh’s early writing focused on children and families. In 1984 she co-wrote The Needs of Parents. Training to Work in the Early Years, which she later co-edited with Lesley Abbott in 1998, reflects the then emerging issue about how the early years workforce could become better qualified. These books characterise her writing throughout that period with a clear focus on burning policy issues.

In 1997, the Times Educational Supplement (31.1.97) described Gillian Pugh as someone who “combines intellectual ability with gritty practical concern for what happens to children and their parents. She is on a mission.” These qualities are reflected in her writing, which is both scholarly and accessible. She has an excellent grasp of policy issues, an encyclopaedic knowledge of related issues and a straightforward style, which makes her writing both interesting and informative. Her best-known book Contemporary Issues in the Early Years is now in its fourth edition. In it a range of leaders in the field of early childhood have put forward their views on current concerns.

Since her retirement from The Coram Family, Gillian has published a history of the charity entitled London’s Forgotten Children. This has been well-received. She comments that although today 40% of babies born in this country are born ‘illegitimately’ i.e. out of wedlock, when the Foundling Hospital was set up in the eighteenth century, illegitimacy carried an enormous stigma. The charity was in fact not for foundlings but for illegitimate children, brought in by their mothers. Nor was it a hospital but the first children’s home, set up long before the wave of Victorian homes for orphaned and abandoned children were created.

Her commitment to such vulnerable children is reflected in another of her books Unlocking the Past, which explores the impact of giving children access to the records held by Barnardo’s. In these and other publications, Pugh reveals her feeling that children need to have someone for whom they are special. An attachment such as this builds children’s resilience despite adverse conditions in infancy.

David Lane who reviewed London’s Forgotten Children (www.childrenwebmag.com 2nd January 2008) suggests that “the key message from the book is that providing and developing services for children and young people does not just happen. It is the result of years of hard work by people such as Thomas Coram and his supporters, who included Handel and Hogarth. It is shaped by researchers such as John Bowlby. If it is not to become outdated, it has to be adapted to new needs and circumstances by innovators who take risks in trying out new approaches.”

Her theory

Gillian Pugh’s lifetime of commitment to children and families embodies her theory, but how can it best be put into words? In a chapter entitled ‘The Voice of the Child’, which she co-wrote with Dorothy Selleck, Pugh suggests that in order to work effectively with young children adults need:

Gillian Pugh’s theories revolve around making things better for children and families. In her introduction to the current edition of Contemporary Issues in the Early Years she analyses the government’s strategy for childcare. The issues she raises are around quality and the interface between schools and early years provisions. She concludes in words which perhaps summarise her thinking:

As the ten-year childcare strategy rolls out, it will be important to ensure that quality of service is maintained as the quantity increases, that children’s needs remain paramount, and that parents really do feel that they have choice.

Putting the theory into practice

Gillian Pugh has been credited with creating the vision of children’s centres. In the 1990s, she gave a lecture in Greenwich, sponsored by the TES, in which she put forward the ideal of a school linked to an early years centre and a health centre. This was to become the starting point for the Millennium School established in the London Borough of Greenwich which was built with government funding to mark the beginning of the twenty first century.

Her theories have always been rooted in practice. Her publications have always had a practical slant - theory translating into both policy and practice. Difficult issues are not merely set out - they are explored and analysed to see whether solutions can be found. This can be clearly seen in her work setting up the Early Childhood Education Forum (now known as ECF).

Her influence

In 1997 the Times Education Supplement carried this report:

Universally admired for her formidable networking skills, Dr Pugh has used her position as director of the NCB’s early childhood unit to hone her knowledge of her subject. She has used her administrative competence as a base for making things happen on the ground locally and with ministers and civil servants nationally. As chair of the Early Childhood Education Forum, a disparate grouping of the warring tribes within early years education, she has done what no-one else could: get the tribes to pow wow.

It is surprising to the uninitiated to find such trouble in the early years field. One might expect the practitioners to sink whatever differences they have in the interests of the children in their care, but that has not always been the case. Those who look after the under-fives in nurseries run by the health or social services have been suspicious sometimes of those who care for under-fives in the education service and vice versa. Maintained nurseries have resented private ones; the voluntary sector has sometimes felt shunned by the state; and so on. Dr Pugh got them round a table.

She was determined to set up a unified organisation because she believed that without a single voice, early childhood professionals would not be listened to. She used the experience of practitioners in New Zealand to drive forward an agenda which could be heard by policy-makers. But, her influence is not confined to the sector itself. She has also been immensely successful in creating links with politicians at all levels. It would be difficult to overestimate the influence she has had and the impact of her work in practical decisions making.

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Comment

This very pragmatism - a willingness to compromise and look for solutions has not endeared Pugh to everyone. The very fact that she has determined to work with politicians and practitioners whatever their views has sometimes led those with more entrenched views on all sides to reject her views.

The Times Educational Supplement adds (3/1/97): “her willingness to work the system does not endear her to radicals impatient for change - or to a few venerable male educationists who find her strength of mind and character hard to take.” Some of her pragmatism, however, may have sprung from the fact that she was working for NCB - an organisation which received government funding. Later, in 2006, now retired, she wrote:

The current emphasis on preparing children for school is (not) appropriate. A far more important question in my view is to ask whether schools are ready for children. We need to pay more attention to how children learn, and the role of schools overall in promoting learning, if early education is to be effective.

Points for reflection

References

London’s Forgotten Children: Thomas Coram and the Foundling Hospital Gillian Pugh (Tempus Publishing 2007)

The King of Children, Betty Jean Lifton (Pan Books 1988)

‘Listening to and Communicating with young children’, Gillian Pugh and Dorothy Selleck in The Voice of the Child edited by Davie et al (Routledge 1995)

Contemporary Issues in the Early Years: working collaboratively for children Gillian Pugh and Bernadette Duffy (editors) (Sage 2006)

The Needs of Parents, Gillian Pugh and Erica De’Ath (NCB 1984)

Training to Work in the Early Years Lesley Abbott and Gillian Pugh (eds) (Open University Press 1998)

Where to find out more

Contemporary Issues in the Early Years: working collaboratively for children Gillian Pugh and Bernadette Duffy (editors) (Sage 2006)

www.ncb.org.uk/ecf

www.coram.org.uk