Recognition of the profession

Money, love and identity: Initial findings from the National ECEC Workforce Study shares the initial findings of a National Early Childhood Education and Care Workforce study – a three-year national study funded by the Australian Research Council. In addition to findings from the study, this report shares key takeaways from conversations during a workshop hosted by the researchers. Capturing responses from participants of this 76-delegate workshop, here you can find observations and insights into emerging themes and the implications they have for policy and practice.

This report reviews the following topics:
1. An overview of initial findings from the ECEC Workforce Study
2. Interesting and surprising findings about tensions in ECEC
3. A summary of participant responses to the study findings and other prioritized workforce topics
4. Key themes responding to the question – looking forward, in an ideal world, what is one ‘must have’ in a national ECEC Workforce Strategy?

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 Global Advocacy Toolkit for the Social Service Workforce from the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance focuses on creating a common narrative to advocate for social service workers. The toolkit was developed through a series of interviews with experts in the field, as well as through desk research.

This toolkit includes four sections:

• The importance of strengthening the social service workforce
• Advocacy – What works when talking to policy and decision-makers?
• Global and regional opportunities
• How do I create a context-specific advocacy outreach plan?

Developed with insight from global experts, the toolkit can be considered a resource for outreach in many settings. The Global Advocacy Toolkit was specifically designed to help the workforce in different settings and allow for localization as needed. It provides tools and tips helpful for developing and implementing an advocacy plan, including how to set up objectives, choose the audience, decide and elaborate the main messages, select the advocacy tools, develop a press release, accompanied by useful examples.   

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.

The brief entitled, California’s ECE Workforce: What We Know Now and the Data Deficit That Remains,takes a look at three recent resources centered on the early childhood workforce in California. These include:

1) local workforce data sources from three counties;
2) annual federal data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; and
3) California-specific data drawn from the 2012 National Survey of Early Care and Education

Though using various datasets presents challenges, this document presents data aimed at better understanding the current status of the early childhood education workforce in California.

The Working in Early Care and Education in North Carolina workforce study provides comprehensive data on teachers, assistant teachers and directors in early care and education centers and on the licensed early care and education programs in which they work.

Data is provided from statewide surveys of the workforce from September 2012 through February 2013.

Other workforce studies can be found via the website listed below.

The Child protection workforce strategy 2017-2020 recognizes the difficulties that can be encountered by child protection practitioners and the vital role practitioners play in working with children and families.
In recognition of the fact that a strong workforce must be supported in order to protect children, Victorian Government focused on five major priorities:

• attracting and recruiting the best people;
• building a professional identity for the workforce that recognizes child protection as a valued; profession of the highest integrity and competence;
• growing and developing our people;
• engaging and retaining our people;
• the wellbeing of our workforce – our goal is to ensure immediate and responsive mental health; support and to develop innovative approaches to the health, safety and wellbeing of our workforce.

The three-year strategy aims to deliver these outcomes.

Transforming the Financing of Early Care and Education outlines a framework for a funding strategy that will provide reliable, accessible high-quality early care and education for young children from birth to kindergarten entry, including a highly qualified and adequately compensated workforce that is consistent with the vision outlined in the 2015 report, Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation.

The recommendations of this report are based on essential features of child development and early learning, and on principles for high-quality professional practice at the levels of individual practitioners, practice environments, leadership, systems, policies, and resource allocation.

This report was published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. You can download the PDF version, read it online or buy it in print here.

Early Childhood Workforce Index 2018 is the second edition of the biennial Early Childhood Workforce Index from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley. This edition continues to track the status of the early childhood education workforce and related state policies in order to understand changes over time. Several new analyses, as well as updated policy indicators and recommendations, have been added. 

The chapters in this resource take a look at those working in the early childhood workforce, their economic security and the policies that impact them.

Worthy Work, STILL Unlivable Wages: The Early Childhood Workforce 25 Years after the National Child Care Staffing Study offers a snapshot of today's early childhood teachers in the United States. The report takes a look through four lenses:

• Then and Now: Trends in Wages, Education, and Turnover Among Early Childhood Teachers, 1989-2014. A comparison of available evidence reveals the extent of change in center-based teachers’ wages, education, and rates of turnover over the past quarter century.
• Economic Insecurity Among Early Childhood Teachers. New evidence reveals the serious consequences of inadequate compensation on this predominantly female, ethnically diverse workforce.
• The Public Costs of Inadequate Compensation. An examination of how widely early childhood workers and their families use public benefits offers a first look at some of the hidden costs of the low wages endemic to this workforce.
• Policy Efforts to Improve Early Childhood Teaching Jobs. An appraisal of state and national efforts to improve the quality of early care and education in the United States focuses on how adequately these have addressed the low wages of the teaching workforce.

The report also offers thoughts on paths forward and reinvigorating the national conversation on the status and working conditions of teaching staff.

Excerpt

"In the 25 years since the release of the National Child Care Staffing Study, combined developments in science, practice, and policy have dramatically shifted the context for discussions about the status of early childhood teaching jobs, and the importance of attracting and retaining a well-prepared workforce that is capable of nurturing young children’s learning, health and development. Three narrative elements of this changed early care and education landscape set the stage for the new evidence presented in this report:

• A developmental story. Since 1989, we have gained exponentially greater knowledge of the powerful role of children’s earliest encounters with caregiving adults in setting a sturdy or fragile foundation for lifelong development.
• An economic story. There is now a far more widespread appreciation for the wise investment that high-quality early care and education (ECE) constitutes for children, families, and society at large.
• A policy story. For the first time since 1971, when national child care legislation made it all the way to a presidential veto, there is serious debate at the federal level, echoed in virtually every state, about the vital importance of improving the quality of early education, with vast implications for what we expect of the early childhood teaching workforce."