ey matters
London
Why EY Matters? My love affair with the Early Years sector began back in 2011
when I started working with Laura Henry, and through my work with her I started
to connect with other Early Years Professionals. During 2013, I supported Laura
with her vision of creating an organisation for the Trainers and Consultants of
the sector, by organising the first meetings, the first survey and collating the
results. Out of this vision NEyTCO was born. Launched in 2014 at the House of
Commons, NEYTCO - National Early Years Trainers and Consultants - brought
together experts in the sector to offer mutual support for trainers and
consultants and a one-stop-shop for early years settings, local authorities,
schools and others. In 2017, at the invitation of the CEO, Catriona Nason, I
started working closely with NEyTCO, looking at the member experience, finding
ways to improve the membership offering and also promoting the members and the
organisation, but sadly in the current climate, NEyTCO was unable to survive and
closed in October 2018. After receiving the devastating news that NEyTCO was
unable to continue trading, I thought long and hard about what this would mean
for the sector and then came up with the idea that the new Twitter Chat
(#EYMatters) I had introduced a few weeks earlier in September could perhaps be
utilised in some way to support Early Years Professionals to continue
connecting, communicating and collaborating. With this in mind, I formed a new
company EY Matters Ltd with the sole purpose of providing the platform to
support the sense of community that has been building over the past few months
between the NEyTCO Members and other individuals, companies and areas within the
sector. I should stress, this is a separate venture from my main business,
Virtual Support UK Ltd, where I still provide support and administration
services to the sector on a Pay-per-Minute basis!