Policy document

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.  

Framework for assessing standards for practice for registered nurses, enrolled nurses and midwives provides a resource for persons assessing the standard of practice of nurses and/or midwives, as well as for nurses and/or midwives whose performance is undergoing assessment.

• The aim is to guide the assessment of competence against the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia standards for practice for registered nurses, enrolled nurses, nurse practitioners and midwives. This important measure ensures the initial and continuing competence of nurses and midwives.
• The framework comprises:
• Principles for assessing standards for practice;
• Critical issues in assessing performance; and
• Key elements in the assessment model.

In the United States, cross-sector core competencies for the prenatal through 3-year-old field are currently being broadened to encompass competencies needed for working with children 3-5 years old. The charge of this report was to: 

1. Identify core competencies needed by the P-3 workforce in Los Angeles County;
2. Develop training approaches to support development of these competencies; and
3. Create and field test strategies in selected Los Angeles communities for integrating the core competencies in professional development systems and developing strategies to sustain their use.

This report captures core competencies agreed upon by the workgroup tasked with this report, as well as recommendations regarding the prenatal through three-year-old workforce.

The EC Workforce 2020 Plan sets out a three-year roadmap for a comprehensive professional development system designed to recruit, retain, compensate, develop, and support a high-quality, diverse, early childhood workforce.The first section of this plan outlines the shared vision and guiding principles that underpin the goals provided in the document. Next, the plan details six goals:

• Workforce development
• Recruitment and retention
• Compensation
• Leadership
• Finance
• Data and continuous quality improvement

The plan also highlights key objectives and activities to best support and advance the workforce. 

A workforce development plan for the early childhood care and education sector in Ireland is the culmination of a significant process of research and consultation across the diverse range of stakeholders in the sector. The result is the identification of a number of agreed perspectives on the type of workforce needed to support the development of high quality Early Childhood Education and Care services in Ireland, as well as the main challenges associated with achieving these goals. 

This plan sets out the scope and vision for workforce development in Ireland, presents the main challenges and opportunities, and reveals the implementation strategy.

Report on the Working Conditions of the Early Years Education and Care Sector 2017 primarily focuses on the poor working conditions and below average pay scales of all those working in the early years sector in Ireland. Diving into several issues impacting services across all provinces, in both rural and urban areas, the report includes sections on:

• policy related issues for consideration;
• working conditions in the early childhood sector;
• areas of concern as views by early years professionals;
• progressive early years investment in other EU countries; and
• recommendations from the joint committee on children and youth affairs.

The report concludes that the lack of recognition for this profession, as well as a lack of investment and high staff turnover rate cause serious sustainability issues for early years services in Ireland.

Preschool teachers education curricula harmonization framework in Serbia, produced under the TEACH project in. This particular work package was titled "Harmonization of Preschool Teacher Training Education in Serbia." The process of curricula harmonization brought together task forces from four preschool teacher education colleges. Each task force was composed of professors, teaching assistants and students. This document lays out the jointly created framework for curriculum harmonization these four teacher education colleges in Serbia.

This Core Competency Framework has been developed for all disciplines, professions and staff groups undertaking a clinical role within NHS Scotland. The twin aims of the framework are
(1) to describe the key areas of child protection work that are common and core across all disciplines, professions and staff groups with a clinical role, and (2) to describe the recommended core knowledge and understanding necessary to support these areas of work. Although this framework will be most appropriate for those with an identified role in relation to protecting children, the information it contains will be of interest to anyone who needs to know how to recognise and respond to concerns about children, in the course of their other, more regular duties.

Competent Educators of the 21st Century: Principles of Quality Pedagogy is a policy document that defines quality teaching practices when working with children from 3 to 10 years old, and their families, to better support the child's development and well-being. 

This resource contains:

• A brief history of the development of the Principles, including references to the international documents on which they are built,
• Explanations of the values the Principles represent for ISSA and its member NGOs,
• Short suggestions for how they can be used and by whom,
• Brief descriptions of each of the 7 Focus Areas that provide the framework for the Principles of Quality Pedagogy,
• A list of the 20 Principles and the 85 Indicators that describe how to apply these Principles.

In addition to the to the four full PDF versions, ISSA has translated the Quality Principles into two Romani dialects: Vlaxicko and Rumungricko. You can find these on the ISSA website.