Policy document

National Guidelines - Best Practice in Early Childhood Intervention presents eight recommended best practices in Early Childhood Intervention. The document also offers rationale for each of these practices in the following quality areas: 

• Family
• Inclusion
• Teamwork
• Universal Principles 

This text draws upon extensive consultation with key stakeholders in the early childhood intervention sector.

This document, commissioned by Health Education England, provides a framework for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for Health Visitors.

The framework sets out the importance of CPD and offers a set of guiding principles that should be embedded in all post-qualifying training and development provided for health visitors. It builds on the standards set out in “A National Framework for Continuing Professional Development for Health Visitors - Standards for the High Impact Areas for Early Years (iHV, 2015)”. Best practice standards are offered to promote the expected knowledge, skills and attitudes that should be achieved by health visitors to support the development of professional practice in four of the key areas identified from policy, key stakeholders and practitioners.

The four standards for Continuing Professional Development included in this document are seen as essential to support the delivery of the Healthy Child Programme ( DH, 2009) and the health visitor service specification (NHS England, 2014). They cover:

• Working therapeutically to effect change with children and families;
• maintaining and developing prescribing practice;
• providing and developing intelligence to inform the Joint Strategic Needs Assessment Process; and
• working in partnership with families and communities to build capacity and resilience.

The Northern Lights Career Development Center is part of the Community College of Vermont. The Center is the hub of Vermont’s unified system of professional development for early childhood and afterschool professionals.
A primary goal of the professional development system is to maintain and enhance a comprehensive, quality, statewide professional development system that:

• Provides evidence-informed professional development opportunities for the workforce led by skilled instructors, mentors, or coaches;
• Aligns with program and professional standards, requirements, and regulations; and
• Recognizes accomplishments of professionals in the field.

The professional development system aims to be consistent, accessible, and responsive to the needs of early childhood and afterschool professionals from entry to advanced levels. Core knowledge and competencies provide the foundation of Vermont’s professional development system. They strengthen the system by creating common language and expectations for the professionals working with young children.

This book includes the knowledge and competencies and describes their development and uses.

Quality is key in Early Childhood Education in Australia highlights several key policy priorities for limiting quality across the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) system. These priorities address gaps in access by focusing on: 

• Pre-service teacher education, especially for Early Childhood Teachers (ECTs) and Diploma-qualified staff
• Pathways to grow pedagogical leaders
• Ongoing embedded and evidence -informed professional learning
• The use of data to track children's developmental, and design appropriate, personalized learning opportunities

This report also takes a look at the many elements of quality in ECEC and their importance.

6 Policies to Support the Early Childhood Workforce shares six policies that the federal government should include as part of significant federal financing reform for early care and education. The following policies will be implemented in partnership with communities: 

• Develop and maintain a comprehensive professional development system with stable funding and measures for quality assurance. 
• Develop or revise statewide career pathways that provide a road map for early childhood professionals to advance in their careers through increasing levels of education, experience, demonstrated competencies, and compensation. 
• Make progress toward compensation and benefit standards at parity with kindergarten teachers. 
• Promote data-driven policies and programs for the workforce with a statewide workforce registry.
• Bolster scholarship programs for early educators.
• Reward degree completion with wage supplements or tax credits.

These coordinated, integrated policies aim to promote a diverse early childhood workforce that is skilled, supported, and adequately compensated.

The Skills Framework is a SkillsFuture initiative developed for the Singapore workforce to promote skills mastery and lifelong learning. Jointly developed by SkillsFuture Singapore (SSG), Workforce Singapore (WSG) and the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA), and together with employers, industry associations, education and training providers and unions, the Skills Framework for Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) provides useful information on:

1. sector and employment opportunities
2. career pathways
3. occupations and job roles
4. existing and emerging skills
5. training programmes for skills upgrading and mastery

With the Skills Framework, individuals are equipped to make informed decisions about career choices, as well as take responsibility for skills upgrading and career planning.

The Framework provides an overview of the 5-must-knows for a fulfilling career in the ECCE sector. These are: 1) Why ECEC quality is important; 2) What it takes to be an inspiring ECEC professional; 3) What’s next for ECEC professionals; 4) Where the opportunities are; and 5) How the government supports ECEC professionals. The Framework also provides an overview of the career pathways in ECEC field and is accompanied by the ECCE Skills Map which details the skills for each of the ECCE occupations. The components within the Skills Map and brief descriptions are as follows: 1) ECCE occupations; 2) skills categories; 3) skills; and 4) training programmes

SkillsFuture

2017

Proposed Revisions to the Definitions for the Early Childhood Workforce in the Standard Occupational Classification proposes changes to the titles, definitions, and placement for the detailed occupations involving the early childhood care and education workforce in the Standard Occupational Classification.

This paper does the following:

• summarizes the key principles and coding guidelines from the 2010 SOC that must be taken into account in proposing revisions to the SOC definitions for the ECCE workforce;
• presents the definitions for the current detailed occupational categories in the SOC pertaining to the ECCE workforce;
• summarizes the problems with the current categorization and definitions as identified by the NAS Committee, and further issues that the Workgroup has identified when considering how the current definitions align with the principles and coding guidelines for the SOC;
• proposes a revised set of categories and definitions, indicating how they address the problems with the current occupational categories and definitions while adhering to the current principles and coding guidelines for the SOC;
• indicates how the revised categories and definitions could be used in conjunction with data on employment by industry to identify key subgroups of the ECCE workforce that are of high priority to federal agencies and other public and private users of the data;
• discusses the important priority of time series continuity (noting the proposed addition of a new Classification Principle focusing on this priority in the May 22nd, 2014 Federal Register Notice), and the potential for conducting time series analyses if the new occupational categories and definitions are adopted;
• discusses the differing contributions of recurrent data collection on the ECCE workforce through the
• federal statistical system and such one-time or periodic efforts as the National Survey of Early Care and Education (NSECE); and finally,
• acknowledges key limitations that cannot be addressed through proposing changes to the SOC categories and definitions, because of the nature of federal data collection on occupations, as well as the need for parallel steps to be taken to review definitions for the workforce working with school-age children in out-of-school-time care.

Proposed Revisions to the Definitions for the Early Childhood Workforce in the Standard Occupational Classification was commissioned by the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and submitted by the Workgroup on the Early Childhood Workforce and Professional Development.

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.

The Role of Social Service Workforce Development in Care Reform illustrates key issues by drawing on the experiences of Indonesia, Moldova and Rwanda – three countries are in the process of reform. Each country's reform takes place within their own context and history, social and political system, protection structure and services, and social services education system.

The case studies highlight each country’s reform processes and identifys learning in terms of the approach taken to strengthen and align the social service workforce given the needs of the system, the scope and actors involved, and the different care reform strategies and outcomes. The case studies are presented with recognition of the ongoing and dynamic process and are examples from different stages and contexts of reform.

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.