On the 26th of May, the EASPD Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) Member Forum and the International Step by Step Association (ISSA) co-hosted a Webinar on building and strengthening integrated national ECI systems.
ts main speaker was Emily Vargas-Barón, director of the RISE Institute, a non-profit organisation founded to provide advisory services on ECD and ECI policy, conduct research, and support training activities for education, ECD and ECI, especially but not solely in countries affected by conflict or extreme poverty.
Initially, she worked for UNESCO and The Ford Foundation, and in 1979 she founded and directed one of the first large scale ECI services in the US. Subsequently she headed education, training and telecommunications for USAID. In 2001, she founded RISE Institute, and she has supported the development of policies, strategic plans, laws, programmes, and research initiatives in the fields of ECI and ECD in many countries of all world regions.
Emily Vargas-Barón presented some topics she is including in her forthcoming book on the development of effective national ECI systems. She defined ECI as composed of multisectoral, integrated and transdisciplinary or interdisciplinary services that support families as they improve the development and resilience of their children with at risk situations, developmental delays, disabilities and behavioural or mental health needs, from zero to three or five years of age. She stressed that ECI services are family-focused rather than child-focused, and they are both integrated and interdisciplinary. ECI professionals and paraprofessionals coach and mentor parents in the natural environment of the child, mainly in the home. ECI services often involve advocacy for the educational and social inclusion of children and their families, and they seek to transition them effectively to inclusive pre-primary and primary education services.
In order to develop National ECI Systems, 8 key elements were outlined:
1. Establishing and recognising a solid legal basis for ECI: strategic plans, action plans and/or laws, combined with mentions in other adopted policy documents;
2. Developing normative ECI Guidelines and Procedures that include core principles, services, and methods as well as establishing service, personnel and performance standards;
3. Adopting an integrated organisational framework and leadership system for national ECI management, coordination, planning and service provision at community, provincial and central levels;
4. Developing an interdisciplinary ECI workforce and professional development system including a pre- and in-service education plan and a wide variety of activities
5. Organising public awareness, policy advocacy and community outreach activities;
6. Establishing community-based developmental screening, identification and referral processes;
7. Creating an integrated management and supervisory system to achieve quality assurance; and
8. Configuring an ECI multisectoral monitoring and evaluation system to attain full programme accountability and conduct continuous planning.
The first step in the process of developing an ECI system is to conduct a national-level ECI Situation Analysis, including the analysis of the status of children and their families as well as of services provided and required for children and families. Vargas-Baron presented subsequent processes essential to developing and strengthening an integrated national ECI system. She also outlined general sources of funding for ECI systems and types of financing schemes used in many countries.
This Webinar was the first event of the lighthouse network project of the EASPD Member Forum on ECI and it is available here. Increasing the knowledge of service providers and public authorities on how to create well-functioning ECI systems is an important objective for EASPD, as this can prevent institutionalisation and increase opportunities for better child and family development and social inclusion. This workshop on ECI will be followed by other activities in the next weeks: the EASPD Balkan Provider Forum on ECI on 3 June and the final conference of the ECI Agora project on 8 June.
