Around 4.5 million children in the UK are living in poverty. Yet poverty is not always immediately visible. It is not necessarily a child without shoes or food. It can be the child who cannot go to the birthday party, have the right school shoes, join the school trip or take part in the ordinary experiences that allow children to feel that they belong.

In this episode, I sit down with Baroness Ruth Lister, one of Britain's leading voices on poverty and social policy, to explore what relative poverty really means, why children's own experiences and voices should shape policy, and why tackling poverty is about more than income.

Because ultimately the test is not simply whether the statistics improve. It is whether childhood improves.

Is giving a young child unrestricted access to digital technology like handing them a vape?

In my latest podcast, I sat down with digital safety expert Katy Potts to confront what many of us are reluctant to say out loud. There is no app to replace your lap.

Listen to the podcast. This matters more than we think!

This is the first hour I’d spent with Professors Chris Pascal OBE and Dr Tony Bertram since they stopped supervising my PhD, and the conversation was every bit as energising and engaging as ever. Affectionately dubbed our “National Treasures” by the study group, Chris and Tony are as generous as they are sharp. We set out to talk about ‘quality’, but it quicky widened into pedagogy, community inequality and the digitally-saturated world children now inhabit. What emerged was a deeply human, deeply practical account of what quality really looks and feels like for children, families and educators.

SEND, Social Justice and the Question We Keep Avoiding

Everyone is talking about SEND. Inclusion. Rising need. Pressures on schools and nurseries. But I am not convinced we all mean the same thing when we use those words. In my latest Talking Early Years podcast, I sat down with the wonderfully energetic Catherine Mole, CEO of Dingley’s Promise and one of the sector’s most passionate advocates for children with SEND, to unpack what is really going on.

Kindness Is the Work: A Conversation with Salas Balde for the Next Generation of Early Years Educators

Every now and then, someone walks into your professional world and reminds you why you care so deeply about Early Years, community, childhood development, and humanity itself. For me, one of those people is Salas. He was last on Talking Early Years in December 2023, and even then, he was a burst of optimism and purpose. Since then, he has done so much more that I felt it was time to bring him back and let him tell the next chapter of his story.

Listen now!

Social justice can sound lofty. Abstract. Something discussed in policy papers or parliamentary chambers. But the truth is, the seeds of fairness, compassion, sustainability and community are planted much earlier than that. They’re sown in the nursery, long before children learn the language of politics. And if we don’t plant them early, we risk raising a generation who see inequality as inevitable rather than something they can change.

That was the heart of my conversation with Susan Santone, author of Reframing the Curriculum and one of the thinkers who most shaped my own PhD journey.