“First Door is an organisation that is passionate and committed to quality training and development, particularly in early childhood education. The trainers are very professional but are friendly and caring. They provide and maintain strong support systems through monthly visits, emails and workshops.

I have team members who have successfully completed and who are currently working towards their early childhood qualifications, who have found their training through First Door to be a very positive experience. I will continue to highly recommend anyone who requires early childhood training to First Door.

First Door have supported our Centre environment and teaching practices through consultation and Professional Conversations workshops. These have discussed areas such as environments, routines, mixed age groups and transition times and their ideas and suggestions have been invaluable to our continued improvement."

“Our team had a great day with Andrea from First Door Training and Development. We valued the time to work together and the inspiration we received from hearing about what other centres are doing. We packed such a lot into one day that we are still thinking about it weeks later!”

"After many years in different roles within the Children’s Services Sector, I found myself in my dream job as an Owner/Director of an Early Learning Centre. I applied for some funding to support the Professional Development of my staff and was successful in obtaining that funding.

Now came the big question. What Professional Development do my team need and want, and who will be best to provide that training for them? Choosing ‘what’ was easy, but being a qualified trainer and assessor myself, choosing a training provider was going to be more the challenge as I am particularly fussy due to my strong passion for what I believe in when it comes to the standard of education and care provided to children under my wings.

I came across a flyer sent out by First Door Training, and immediately felt a connection to the ethos portrayed by this organisation. Andrea Isitt provided most of our training workshops and I came away from each of her sessions excited, empowered and supported against my own personal views and philosophies about what constitutes quality care for the under 4 year age group. I guess you would call Andrea and I, kindred spirits. This is not a term you hear often these days, but to have a professional person who you can share your passion with, challenge your thinking with and work in collaboration with to provide children with the care they need and deserve – and which provides parents with the assurance that you are the best you can be, is completely priceless.

I can’t recommend First Door Training enough. Their methodology is user-friendly and reaches the potential of each participant in the group – whether a large or small group. All their training is underpinned by sound theoretical knowledge and understandings which are current and relevant. I would challenge anyone to come out of one of their training sessions without some re-ignited passion for what they want to achieve with their chosen career and enthusiasm to bring everyone along with them on the journey."

"I have accessed First Door Training and Development in many ways to assist our Early Childhood Professionals that we have at Chatterbox.  Our team members have attended specific professional development workshops that are regularly set up by First Door training. We have also had Andrea from First Door attend training nights at our Centres to work with each team on topics relevant to them.  Most recently we asked Andrea to put together and present a comprehensive and interactive four hour presentation for all of our 75 staff, at our annual team training day.  We had specific topics as an organisation that we wanted to cover and Andrea was very thorough in gathering the information to ensure the workshop was exactly what we were after.  I found this consultation process and the way Andrea specifically tailored the training extremely beneficial to our team.  The presentation on the day encompassed a great detail of knowledge about the requested topics as well as allowing for fun group participation to get everyone thinking!  Our team left inspired and excited to return to their respective Centres and implement the ideas they had taken from the First Door workshop."

"The dedicated, organised, nurturing trainers have played a pivotal role in helping to the get the team at YMCA Strathpine moving forward from conflicting understandings and viewpoints to a shared and improved understanding of the documentation cycle. Through discussion as a team we were able to analyse systems we use that were not effective. The centre team was able to reach shared understanding of new strategies and provided with ideas and tools to effectively use the cycle of plan, document and evaluate."