With over thirty years childcare experience in all sectors on the market, Maureen is a highly-qualified, experienced and utterly professional early years consultant.  With her, you’ll be able to work in the spirit of Goodall, in that ‘what you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.’  Together that ‘difference’ will be immense.

• Maureen’s credentials are extensive:
• Member of the Chartered Management Institute
• Member of the Institute of Consulting
• 2013 4Children Business Champion
• Accredited Growth Vouchers advisor
• Business mentor for the British Chambers of Commerce and Community & Business Partners
• Volunteer on Pre-school Learning Alliance Lancashire County Committee
• Volunteer for Institute Of Consulting North West region

• Business planning
• Occupancy projection
• Planning for 2-year-olds
• Fee strategies and projections
• Business health check
• KPIs
• Implementing government policy and initiatives
• Business training
• Grants and funding applications
• Financial planning, ratios and cash flow

• Implementing government funding
• Leadership, management and change issues
• Software guidance
• Administration
• Policies and procedures
• Marketing, social media and market research
• Recruitment and personnel management
• Training and development of employees, including CPD
• Business mentoring and coaching of individuals and teams
• Childcare start-ups and registration support

Our business and coaching associate is Paul Aisthorpe.  He specialises in supporting medium-sized businesses. Working quietly behind the scenes on EYFS Resources he is seen a ‘can do’ person.  This quality has spilled into every role he has undertaken, from shift working to a director.  His aim is to be a ‘can do’ person for you.  

Starting in retail and commercial banking, his career path took him to hospitality and catering, and finally being one of the first to use, and ultimately reside in, business coaching.  In these fields, he has always been fascinated by the concepts of leadership, goal planning, business mechanics, and addressing the needs of both customer and employee.  

Paul has studied knowledge and best practice from a wealth of industries including the childcare sector.  This has led him to work with EYPs to ensure that they are leading the practice in early years settings.  In addition, he is a member of the local chamber of commerce and is also a student mentor at Lancaster University.

Outside of working his other passions (amongst many) are rugby league and the Huddersfield Giants – not surprisingly a teamwork pastime.  However, when not donning his thermals to watch a game, keep fit and worldwide travel keep him busy.

• Business Start-Up advice
• Business health checks
• Growth planning
• Financial planning and management
• Budgeting
• Cash forecasting and flows
• Costings, fees, and related headcount levels
• Funding sources and application

• Recruitment and induction
• Training analysis, delivery and continuous professional development (CDP)
• Human resources (HR)
• Business coaching
• Setting key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Business strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threat assessment (SWOT)
• Market research and competitor assessment
• Marketing and unique selling points (USPs)

Dean is our guy in health and safety.  An experienced consultant and family man, his aim is to demystify the safety world and create safe early years environments.  With him in your team ‘outstanding‘ in related training, advice, policy and mentoring are just a click away.  Take the stress out of health and safety; know your COSHH from your RIDDOR; have a chat with Dean.

Is health and safety an impenetrable jungle?

Full of words, white papers, regulation and amendments that are hard to fathom, when all you want to do is make sure that you’re changing a nappy in the most hygienic and safest way possible? Well, struggle no more with Dean’s support. With a successful background in quality management and safety, Dean established his business to provide a ‘human’ approach.  Recognising that a good grasp of this aspect of business was essential, but often delivered ‘dry’, he set off to make health and safety human, easily understandable and believe it or not…fun.

Armed with his passion for comedy clubs Dean can make the barriers fall away from safety and allow all early years professionals to adopt processes and policies with ease.

• Training on matters such as manual handling, COSHH, risk assessment, fire, electricity and display screen equipment
• Flexible workshops
• The development of policy, procedure and risk assessment
• Implementation of health and safety policy, procedures, practice and culture

• Specific health and safety early years matters that are particular to your business
• Quality management systems
• Incident reporting and RIDDOR
• Continuing professional development
• Mentoring