Latin America and Caribbean

There is mounting evidence on the positive link between high quality early childhood development (ECD) personnel and the physical, social, and cognitive development of young children. Despite this growing body of knowledge, the early childhood workforce continues to face challenges such as inadequate training, low remuneration, and a lack of professional recognition. Moreover, a lack of documentation on promising approaches to address these workforce challenges limits opportunities to learn from the implementation experiences of different countries around the world.

To bring light to these challenges, and potential responses to them, the Early Childhood Workforce Initiative (ECWI) has developed 6 country briefs which highlight efforts to support the workforce across different geographies and services.

These country briefs were informed by desk reviews and information collected through key informant interviews (KII) with country experts from implementing NGOs, multilaterals, and research institutions, as well as program managers and government officials across 15 countries. After identifying six promising country approaches to highlight, we conducted further desk research and interviews to inform the country briefs. These interviews were particularly helpful for clarifying the key enablers and barriers to implementation in each country as well as the policy lessons for other countries.

The first of these briefs focuses on Ecuador. Professionalizing the Workforce Supporting Infants and Toddlers from Birth to Three highlights the government of Ecuador’s approach to professionalizing childcare center and home visiting workers with pre- and in-service training that emphasizes theoretical knowledge and practical skills.

Denise Bonsu, Results for Development

2019

Resisting Neoliberalism: Professionalisation of Early Childhood Education and Care focuses on the professionalization of early childhood in Australia, Chile, England, Germany, Ireland and the United States.

This paper questions how the sector manages the constraints imposed by a neoliberal political and social world and calls upon manages the constraints imposed on it in a neoliberal political and social world. It calls on professionals to take a stand in terms of what is considered best practice. The paper further argues that continued debate is needed around the boundaries of what is called the early childhood profession, considering the ways in which the education, health and welfare sectors contribute to a holistic approach balanced against the requirement for a profession to have an identified and discrete body of knowledge.

Mary Moloney, Margaret Sims, Antje Rothe, Cynthia Buettner

International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education

2019

Today, there is a growing interest on the part of governments and other institutions to make large investments in the early years. However, many well-intentioned initiatives designed to support the health and development of young children struggle to move beyond the pilot or project stage. A critical factor in delivering quality services for young children is the quality of the workforce involved in delivering a service. In this Webinar, we will be discussing the challenges in scaling up the early childhood workforce by using two examples of programmes targeting children aged birth to three and their caregivers.These programs include the Cuna Mas Home Visiting programme in Peru, and a program supported by PATH in Mozambique to integrate early childhood development screening and counselling into the routine work of community health workers and clinical providers. Under the ECWI, R4D recently carried out (1) a country study on the workforce supporting Cuna Mas in Peru, and (2) a global landscape analysis of training and professional development for the broader early childhood workforce which includes a case study of PATH’s work in Mozambique.We are very fortunate to have as our Webinar panellists two of the researchers of the country study in Peru, Gabriela Guerrero (GRADE) and Kimberly Josephson (Results for Development), as well as Jordi Fernandez (PATH) and Nami Kawakyu (Kawayku Consulting) who are actively involved PATH’s maternal and child health work in Mozambique.To listen to the webinar recording, click the YouTube link below. Visit the webinar page to access all the webinar presentations.

The role of social work in international child protection: best practices in stakeholder cooperation focuses on the intersection of law, policy implementation, and social work in child protection, specifically child protection involving children who are separated by an international border from their families.

In addition to providing an overview of the role of social work in child protection this paper also presents several key strategies for building cooperation and collaboration between social workers and legal and judicial partners.

Authors, Julie Gilbert Rosicky of the University of Oregon and Felicity Sackville Northcott of Johns Hopkins University, offer detailed recommendations for mutually supportive and sustainable international social work and legal cooperation.  

Early Childhood Policies and Systems in Eight Countries: Findings from IEA’s Early Childhood Education Study  is an exploration of early childhood education (ECE) provision and its role in children's preparation for school and participation in society. In this context, formal early education and provision of care for young children from birth to the age of primary school is described and analyzed in Chile, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Poland, the Russian Federation and the United States. The data was collected by way of a policy questionnaire, which collected basic information about the wider policy context for ECE in the participating countries. This report provides an overview of strategies, as well as systemic and structural results of ECE policy at the national and, where necessary, subnational levels.

This research study, from International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, presents key findings are presented throughout the report, alongside their supporting evidence. 

The Early Childhood Workforce Initiative Country Study Series examines ways to strengthen and scale up a quality workforce. The first of these studies, Supporting the early childhood workforce at scale: The Cuna Más home visiting program in Peru, focuses on Cuna Más, a large-scale ECD program in Peru.

As one of few home visiting programs operating – and having been evaluated – at scale in low- and middle-income countries, Cuna Más holds valuable workforce lessons that may resonate more broadly with ECD programs and policymakers seeking to reach young children and families around the world:

• Supervision in the field is critical for the home visiting workforce, particularly in rural contexts where many workers have limited training or experience and work independently much of the time.

• In addition to delivering important content, educational materials are critical for empowering community home visitors who may not have the training or experience to otherwise provide guidance to young children and families.

• It is important to identify and address workers’ travel-related barriers, especially in rural or remote areas

• Career ladders and pay scales can reward both professionals and volunteers for their dedication, retain and leverage the experience of high-performing individuals, and encourage strong candidates to see working in ECD as a viable career path, rather than temporary employment.

Home visiting is often used to reach vulnerable young children as well as their caregivers. Trained individuals regularly visit a caregiver and child to improve parenting behaviors, the home environment, and impact child outcomes. The Cuna Más home visiting service enjoys relatively high coverage and early results are promising: a recent impact evaluation by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) found large effects on children’s cognitive and language development. However, operating at scale presents challenges to quality and sustainability.

Towards the Right Care for Children: Orientations for reforming alternative care systems - Africa, Asia, Latin America, commissioned by the European Commission Directorate General for International Cooperation and Development commissioned SOS Children’s Villages International to conduct a study on the possible issue of institutionalization in six South and Central American, Asian and African countries, in order to strengthen the knowledge of the European Commission on the nature, the extent and scope of institutionalization and feasibility of the de-institutionalization.
 
The objectives of this research was to:

• map and summarize the existing knowledge on (de-) institutionalization in the three continents concerned;
• increase the knowledge base on (de-) institutionalization in the six countries; and
• provide guidelines for future EU strategies on (de-)institutionalization in developing countries.

This synthesis report brings together desk reviews and country studies through which a large collection of documents from various sources have been consulted.

This document is an integral part of the set of technical references of the Strategy “De Cero A Siempre”, which seeks to guide those who have responsibilities in the Comprehensive Early Childhood Care (AIPI) about the promotion of child development through the lenses of protecting children’s rights. In this sense, these Guidelines are in line with other Guidelines published under the strategy and aims at informing the qualification of all those who work in the field of early childhood.  The document is understood as a qualification of the workforce in the field of education that aims, on the one hand, to broaden, deepen and renew the knowledge previously acquired by people who work -directly or indirectly- with early childhood and on the other hand, to improve early childhood care practices in such a way that they aim at the holistic development of children aged 0 to 6 years. The Guidelines are accompanied by the operative guide and the monitoring and evaluation proposal.

CINDE

2013