Policy document

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.

Child Care: Research-Based Policy Recommendations for Executive and Legislative Officials in 2017 presents the following set of reccomenations:

• Use regional market rate survey data to inform a tax credit formula that will provide a true benefit to families.
• Support a highly effective child care workforce with scholarships for training and education.
• Use caution when amending child care regulations, specifically child-teacher ratios and group size requirements.

This short policy brief was released by Child Trends.

The early years workforce: A review of European research and good practices on working with children from poor and migrant families elaborates on recent studies in European Member States and provides insights on successful strategies for ECEC workforce professionalization to include and serve children from low income and migrant families. Four questions are central to this research:

• What competences do professionals need to work with children from low income and migrant families?
• What kind of initial professionals need to work with children from low income and migrant families?
• What kind of continuing professional development is needed?
• What kind of governance is needed?

For a child welfare agency to achieve its mission, it must attract, develop, and retain a skilled and ready workforce. Yet, child welfare agencies across the country are struggling to recruit, hire, train, support, and retain committed and high-performing staff. To hear key stakeholder concerns about the child welfare workforce, the Children’s Bureau and the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute invited 28 state and county agency leaders and 7 university partners, Children’s Bureau staff and national consultants to participate in a Workforce Workgroup on March 4-5, 2013. This report is a compilation of the most pressing child welfare workforce issues they face and recommended strategies for developing the child welfare workforce of the future.

The quality and qualifications of the childcare and early years workforce are steadily improving and have never been better. But the sector has reached tipping point, with increasing evidence that early years practitioners are severely under strain.

The public funding environment is set to remain challenging over the next five years. However the substantial investment in early education and childcare that is being made through the Tax-Free Childcare scheme and the doubling of the free childcare entitlement for working families provides a vital opportunity to support workforce development. This briefing makes a series of practical recommendations, many of which do not require additional public funding, which seek to remove barriers to entry and progression and support the sector to retain and make the most of the talented individuals already working in childcare and early years.

Early Years Workforce Strategy is the early childhood education and care workforce strategy for Australia from 2012 through 2016. It sets out a vision agreed upon by Australian governments, which aims to build and support the early childhood education and care profession. The strategy aims to guide governments, as well as the sector as a whole, to: deliver a sustainable, highly qualified and professional workforce; foster a flexible and responsive workforce capable of identifying and delivering services in response to the needs of children and families; and support ECEC staff to work in a more integrated way with the broader early childhood development (ECD) workforce including the range of professionals that work with children and their families across health and family services. The following five priority areas have been identified as essential components of achieving a sustainable and highly qualified ECEC workforce: 1) a professional workforce; 2) a growing workforce; 3) a qualified workforce; 4) a responsive workforce; and 5) a collaborative workforce.

The strategy which builds on 2009’s Investing in the Early Years –A National Early Childhood Development Strategy, reflects a commitment by governments to address the immediate priorities for the ECEC workforce, and at the same time working towards a long-term broader strategy for the workforce with a focus on supporting more integrated ways of working across the ECD sector.

Commissioned By:
Standing Council on School Education and Early Childhood

2012

Ultimately, high-quality ECEC services must not only be accessible, affordable, and available, but also desirable and relevant to all families and responsive to changing demographics and evolving needs in order to be successful.

The recommendations that follow are intended to provide a comprehensive set of guiding principles for policymaking at the local, national, and federal levels, as well as for funders and other stakeholders, and are based on the knowledge generated from the Transatlantic Forum on Inclusive Early Years’ (TFIEY) convenings. While these recommendations are focused on issues in ECEC that may particularly impact children in a low-income or migrant context, they are considerations that can benefit all young children and families in ECEC systems across the EU and US regardless of their background. Investing in inclusive, high-quality ECEC is a win-win situation: for all children and their families and for society.

The goal of the integrated programme guide for ECD in emergencies is to guide the humanitarian community in designing a response that takes into account the needs of young children. This programme guide can be used in times of emergency preparedness, response, and early recovery, and for building resilience. It is designed for use by UNICEF Programme Officers as well as for representatives from other UN agencies, NGOs and government divisions responsible for designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating ECD interventions.

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