Policy document

The Home Visiting Workforce Needs Assessment Tool aims to help Ministries and government agencies reflect on the ways in which they can support personnel delivering home visiting programs across sectors for pregnant mothers and caregivers with children under 3. Drawing inspiration from the UNICEF Pre-Primary Diagnostic and Planning Tool, this tool is intended for countries with home visiting programs at either the sub-national or national levels.

This report which was issued by BRIDGE, Ilifa Labantwana, National ECD Alliance (NECDA), the Nelson Mandela Foundation, Smartstart and the South African Congress for Early Childhood Development (SACECD), is based on a survey of 3,952 ECD operators in South Africa conducted in mid-April 2020.

The COVID-19 virus has created considerable uncertainty about the remainder of this school year, the next school year, and beyond. Federal, state, and local government responses should be informed by understanding current policies and their history, including the effects of the last major economic crisis, the Great Recession, on America’s state-funded preschool programs.

The COVID-19 crisis has revealed how much our nation relies on early care and education services in order for other workforces to function, yet chronic disregard for early educators’ well-being has essentially rendered their needs invisible. The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment has developed a set of 5 recommendations intended to be undertaken together, that help protect the lives of early educators and their communities and prioritize getting financial relief directly to childcare programs and staff.

This INEE Guidance Note addresses a gap in the tools that are currently available to educators and professionals operating in emergency and crisis contexts. This INEE Guidance Note encourages more intentional and consistent implementation of practical, goodquality psychosocial interventions on the education frontlines by teachers, education administrators, parents, counselors, peers, ministries, and other education personnel in three concrete ways:

Early childhood education and care (ECEC) – the phase before primary education – is increasingly acknowledged as providing the foundations for lifelong learning and development. This second edition of Key Data on Early Childhood Education and Care in Europe charts the progress made in the key quality areas identified in the Council Recommendation on High Quality ECEC Systems.

Recruiting and retaining skilled staff is a long-standing challenge for the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector. OECD countries are increasingly demanding that ECEC staff be highly skilled and highly qualified, but a combination of low wages, a lack of status and public recognition, poor working conditions, and limited opportunities for professional development mean that recruitment and retention are frequently difficult. What can countries do to build a highly qualified and well-trained ECEC workforce?

The Early Childhood Higher Education Inventory, administered by the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California at Berkeley, assists policymakers and other stakeholders to develop a more coordinated and comprehensive professional preparation and development system for the early care and education workforce. The Inventory is a mechanism to describe the landscape of a state’s early childhood degree program offerings, at the associate, bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral levels.

Public policy work is often incremental. Sometimes successes are realized by steady movement along the same path. Sometimes great strides are made by starting over and doing something bold. There is not one single right way to approach policy work. But before any plans are made and actions are taken, it is crucial that all stakeholders are aware of the current policies and contexts.

The National Association of Social Workers, has developed the Practice Standards & Guidelines which provide benchmarks that describe the services that social workers should provide; that employers should support and that consumers should expect. Standards/guidelines reflect current and emerging best practice trends and are a critical component of the professional social worker's toolkit. They are useful for both new and experienced practitioners, and can be effective advocacy tools.