An inspiration to all who knew her

Abstract

Editor An inspiration to all who knew her During the course of putting together this issue, the sad news reached us of the untimely death of helen Bromley. Our thoughts are with, and our deepest sympathies go to, helen’s family and friends. Their loss overshadows everything else. The early years sector has lost a shining light, a true star. Anyone who was privileged to have been trained by helen will count himself or herself as fortunate. She was an inspiration, one of those people who just ‘got’ children and childhood. Listening to helen talk about her work in settings made you realise just how simple the early years should be, and by that, i do not mean that it is easy or that anyone can do it. What i am trying to convey is just how natural someone like helen made it seem. You could tell that children would enjoy being in a setting with her, because you can easily imagine helen having just as much fun as the children, following their interests, sharing their experiences, healthily disregarding policy and frameworks as and when necessary, which i imagine was fairly often! it was this no-nonsense approach that really appealed to me. Do what’s right for children, not what’s right for policy makers. use children’s interests, rather than pre-planned themes and resources, whether that be football, superheroes, monsters, railways, knitting... As an editor, handling copy from many different contributors, with vastly different experiences of writing, helen was a dream. her words needed hardly any editing, and there was rarely anything superfluous. Knowledge poured forth. helen had become an editorial board member of eye before i joined (that’s almost nine years ago) and was a regular contributor, often writing a series of six or 12 articles at a time. They taught me a great deal, and i imagine they have taught practitioners a great deal also. recently, i found myself thinking about the last time i had met helen, and to my shock i realised that, in all the time we had worked together, i had only ever met helen twice, both at early years shows. We e-mailed regularly, and i enjoyed our exchanges immensely. They pretty much always followed the same format: A line or two about the work at hand; a paragraph or two, sometimes more, and often followed by further e-mails, about football. namely, the fortunes of helen’s beloved Liverpool FC. i did try to sneak in the fortunes of my own team, Wolves, occasionally, but generally we talked about Liverpool. These days, i tend not to look too much further than League One, but it would be great to see Brendan rodgers, and his team, mount a title challenge this season. We have lost a true champion of children, but helen leaves a legacy, through her training, through her articles, through her personality and beliefs, that we must all try and pick up on and take forward. We owe that much to children. i plan to run a larger article in next month’s issue and would welcome contributions so that we can share your memories and tributes to helen. if you would like to share your thoughts, please send your contributions to me at neil.henty@markallengroup.com by December 11th. Editor Neil Henty MSc eye@markallengroup.com