Monitoring & mentoring

Call to Action on the Social Service Workforce Strengthening in the Europe and Central Asia Region, developed by Oxford Policy Management and UNICEF Europe and Central Asia, seeks to ensure that functions, competencies and qualifications across the social service workforce are aligned so there will no longer be unqualified professionals in roles requiring professional competencies and there will be a range of personnel deployed across a range of services with the right qualifications for the competencies and responsibilities of their position.

The governments of the region are called upon to act upon the following:

1. Agreeing to a common set of definitions of the social service and allied workforces in the ECA region
2. Effective long-term planning of the social service workforce and aligning functions, processes, competencies and qualifications
3. Developing the competencies of the social service workforce
4. Supporting the social service workforce

The Erasmus+ report, Professionalisation of Childcare Assistants in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC): Pathways towards Qualification, focuses on reviewing profiles of ECEC assistants in 15 European countries, as well as the professionalization opportunities available to them. The report makes recommendations on how pathways for qualification and continuous professional development (CPD) can be created for assistants. Examples from Denmark, France and Slovenia show some successful pathways in these areas.

Several key findings were introduced in the report. The first is that ECEC assistants are not recognized in policy documents or research. This is unacceptable considering the high number of assistants in the ECEC workforce. Additionally, ECEC assistants have little opportunity to receive the same qualification as a core practitioner. There should be investment in systems that reward the work of all staff, and opportunities to be upwardly mobile at work. This includes increasing the number of opportunities for professional development that assistants have access to. European countries do not generally provide funding for staff’s non-contact time, causing assistants to miss out on reflection time with their teams.

Proper supervision enables home visitors to form supportive relationships with families. Supervision: supporting professionals and enhancing service quality focuses on supporting the supervision of home visitors in order to guide home visitors in their work.

Through these modules, readers may: 

• review the meaning of supervision and the contribution it makes to support quality in the delivery of services and professional development of the home visitor;
• reflect on the supervisory role and related activities in supporting professional development in the work environment;
• explore the meaning of lifelong learning and professional development; and
• reflect on current supervision practices as related to home visiting and identified concrete actions and approaches that can be used to strengthen them.

This module belongs to the Supporting Families for Nurturing Care resource modules for home visitors.

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.