Monitoring & mentoring

Based on its long experience in working with practitioners, mostly in challenging contexts, ISSA has articulated an approach that embeds the values and practices that are considered to lead to meaningful and sustainable mechanisms for continuous professional growth.

An important outcome of this process is called “Roads to Quality”. This is more than a guidebook explaining how the resources in the ISSA Quality Resource Pack can be used to increase the quality of practices in early childhood education services. It stands for ISSA’s approach towards practitioners’ professional growth and nurturing their professionalism. It stands for the systemic change in early childhood education systems that should reflect the concern to invest in professionalism. As a democratic and inclusive professional learning community, ISSA promotes learning within its network, while at the same time bringing in knowledge and innovation from outside the network.

With this guidebook, ISSA proposes not only a quality framework for early childhood education practices—including a range of resources supporting its translation into practice—but also a “know-how” approach that reflects the consistency between scaffolding children’s development and learning, and scaffolding practitioners’ professional growth in such a way that each achieves their full potential.

This regional (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Moldova, Romania and Serbia) overview aims to sketch the social service workforce—with a focus on those engaged in the child protection system—in southeast Europe. Specific research areas include, but are not limited to the following:
1. Perceptions and understandings of social service work
2. Who does what and where
3. Policy and regulatory frameworks
4. Organization and funding of child protection systems
5. Competencies and standards for the social service workforce
6. Professional development opportunities
7. Motivation and support
8. Working conditions for the workforce
The finding of the study can be used for improving the child protection system and the lives of children, families and communities by multiple stakeholders which among other include: national governments, professional social service worker associations, NGOs and civil society agencies that rely on the social service workforce to provide child protection services, and educational institutions who train social service workers.
This report represents part of a global research movement to map the social service workforce in diverse regions, which aims at highlighting promising approaches and unique elements to certain countries whereas at the same time identifies common challenges and trends across regions.

Child Protection Hub

2016

Below you may download one of the 30 Workforce Profiles (country reports) on the current status quo regarding the qualification requirements for early childhood education and care professionals (pedagogues, teachers, educators), the composition of the workforce, the systems of initial professional education and continuing professional development, current reform initiatives and research projects and selected aspects of the working conditions of staff in each of the 30 participating countries.The initial Workforce Profiles in Systems of Early Childhood Education and Care in Europe were provided by mostly long-standing cooperation partners according to a research specification which they received for comment before compilation of the data. The final versions are based on a long period of close collaboration between the editors and the authors. The reports vary in length between approximately 25 pages and 80 pages.SEEPRO-R takes a look at many of the new fundamental reforms including, qualification and competence requirements for early childhood workforce and the structures of professional studies and continuing education. More on the SEEPRO-R project here.

2017 Home Visiting Yearbook is one of the first publications from the National Home Visiting Resource Center. It was developed with the recognition that, as many communities have implemented home visiting models aimed at improving outcomes for children and families, there has not been a comprehensive overview of how home visiting is across the country. This resource aims to inform readers as they make decisions in policy and practice. The following critical questions are addressed: 

Where do home visiting programs operate? 
How many families and children are being served by home visiting, and how many more could benefit? 
Who develops and administers home visiting? 
Who funds home visiting?

This first edition presents the most complete data available on home visiting in the United States.

Review of Occupational Role Profiles in Ireland in Early Childhood Education and Care presents a profile for the early childhood profession in Ireland.

The aim is to develop the Irish early childhood care and education sector into a genuine Competent System. A central requirement for achieving this goal is a shared orientation for all practitioners working with children from birth to eight years, regardless of occupational status, job title and level of formal qualification.

The concept of Competent Systems in early childhood has been developed by the CoRe project – an international study that investigated Competence Requirements in Early Childhood Education and Care on behalf of the European Commission (Urban, Vandenbroeck, Van Laere, Lazzari, & Peeters, 2011). Central to a competent system is that shared orientations are not only required of practitioners ‘on the ground’ but of all professionals and institutions that together constitute the early childhood system: early childhood settings, training and professional preparation, research, regulation and governance, inspection and evaluation.

Proposal for key principles of a Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care is the report of the Working Group on Early Childhood Education and Care under the auspices of the European Commission.

The authors of the report focus on which measures have helped Member States address and promote measurable improvements for children, families, local communities and society.

Describing the Preparation and Ongoing Professional Development of the Infant/ Toddler Workforce: An Analysis of the National Survey for Early Care and Education Data presents an analysis describing the professional development activities of the United States’ Infant/Toddler (I/T) workforce. The analyses shared in this brief aim to help the filed better understand the strengths and needs of the I/T workforce in center-based and home-based early care and education programs.

Home visiting programs for HIV-affected families: a comparison of service quality between volunteer-driven and paraprofessional models investigated whether or not additional investment in paraprofessional staff translated into higher quality service delivery. The study, conducted in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa was conducted over a two-year span. The results suggested that compensation and extensive training programs for home visitors are better able to serve and retain beneficiaries than volunteer home visiting programs.

This end of project evaluation examined how well Children First (CF) had responded to Mid Term Review recommendations as well as evaluation questions regarding innovative, sustainable and effective models of service delivery; quantity, quality and timeliness of results; capacity development for partners and communities; and institutionalization of models within relevant government structures.

CF sought to mitigate the impact of HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe by developing and improving on effective models of care and support for OVC and leveraging the experience of national and community-based organizations to increase access to quality holistic services for OVC. CF sought to mitigate the impact of HIV and AIDS in Zimbabwe by developing and improving on effective models of care and support for OVC and leveraging the experience of national and community-based organizations to increase access to quality holistic services for OVC. Over the five-year project period, CF included 22 partner organizations that provided education, health, child protection services and advocacy for OVC.

This bulletin for professionals presents an overview of child welfare supervision and explores the dimensions of supervision that agencies may want to consider as they seek to strengthen the effectiveness of their services to children and families. This bulletin is designed to provide child welfare supervisors, managers, and related professionals with examples of States’ efforts to strengthen supervisory capacity and with tools and resources to enhance supervisory skills.