Ey Matters

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!